How to add extensions onto multiple files?

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Level 1

4 points

How to add extensions onto multiple files?

Hi,

an external drive I had failed but I managed to retrieve all what I had. Unfortunately all the file extensions were gone. It is not an issue of not seeing them, they just disappeared (if I go to 'Get info' where it says 'Hide extension' is greyed out).

If I manually insert an extension to a file, the file opens without a problem. Unfortunately, I have a lot of file I need to access and manually adding an extension to each file is really time-consuming.

I know in Automator you can replace an extension, but I can't see that adding an extension is possible... Am I missing something? or is any other way to do it faster?

Thanks in advance for your help

Mac Pro, macOS 10.12

Posted on Jun 13, 2020 6:24 AM

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Answer 1

medwds

Level 4

2,194 points

Jun 13, 2020 12:38 PM in response to zaja

You can rename multiple items in Finder and one of the options is to add text after the name.

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Answer 2

rccharles

Level 6

13,037 points

Jun 13, 2020 9:16 PM in response to zaja

You can use the terminal command file to find out what type of file it is.

example:

mac $ file translation.txt 
translation.txt: ASCII text
mac $ 
mac $ cd desktop
/Users/mac/desktop
mac $ ls *.j*
Eva's bird.jpg      Eva's fox.jpeg      IMG_2339~photo.JPG* IMG_2340~photo.JPG*
mac $ file Eva\'s\ bird.jpg 
Eva's bird.jpg: JPEG image data, EXIF standard

DIY: your going to have to automate this somehow.

here is an exzmple of batch rename

https://osxdaily.com/2016/11/08/batch-change-file-extensions-mac/

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How to add extensions onto multiple files?

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