Bulk-rename invoice and receipt PDFs on Windows — what File Explorer and PowerRename can and cannot do

To follow Japan's Electronic Books Preservation Act, invoice and receipt PDFs are given names such as date_counterparty_amount. Windows has Rename in File Explorer, and PowerRename in Microsoft's PowerToys, and both change the names of several files at once. But neither appears to have a way to read the transaction date, counterparty and amount written inside a PDF and put them in the name. This page covers the methods and steps that work on Windows.

Updated 2026-10-09. What is written about File Explorer and PowerRename was checked against Microsoft's support pages and documentation up to this date. We have not checked it by operating a Windows screen.

Summary

When you select several files in File Explorer and rename them, they all get the same name with a number at the end. You cannot put a different date, counterparty and amount into each file.
PowerRename in PowerToys can replace text, add counters and put a file's creation date and time in the name. Microsoft's documentation lists no feature that reads the text inside a PDF and puts it in the name.
Put the transaction date, counterparty and amount in the file name, in the same order for every file. Example: 20260930_SampleCo_11000.pdf
Dencho Rename runs inside the browser, so it works on Windows with nothing to install. Drop the PDFs in together, and it reads the date, amount and counterparty and gives every file a name in the same order. Free for up to 5 files at a time.

What Rename in File Explorer can do

Select a file in File Explorer, press F2, type the new name and press Enter, and the name changes (Microsoft Support).

Select several files, press F2, type a name and press Enter, and all the selected files get that name with (1), (2), (3) and so on at the end (Canon Marketing Japan Group's PC Q&A, in Japanese; the screens shown are Windows 8.1). We could not find this behavior on an official Microsoft page, and we have not checked it on a Windows screen.

This only gives the same name and a number. The transaction date, counterparty and amount differ from file to file, so to put them in the names you open the PDFs one by one, read them and type the names with F2.

For up to about 10 files a month, that is enough. With more files, opening, reading and typing takes time, and separators and date formats tend to drift.

What PowerRename can and cannot do

PowerRename is a bulk renaming utility included in Microsoft's PowerToys, a set of utilities for Windows. Select files in File Explorer, right-click and choose Rename with PowerRename to open it. This item appears only when PowerRename is enabled in PowerToys (Microsoft's documentation).

Feature	What it does	Use for invoices and receipts
Search and replace	Finds text in the names and replaces it with other text. Regular expressions can be used	Change "scan" to "invoice". Make a counterparty's name consistent
Counter	Puts a number in the names. You can set the start value, the increment and the number of digits	Number the files in sequence
File creation date and time	Puts the year, month, day and time the file was created in the names	This is the day the file was downloaded or saved, not the transaction date written in the document
Photo metadata	Puts the date taken, the camera model and so on in the names	A feature for photos
Preview and undo	Check the results before renaming. After renaming, undo the last change with Ctrl+Z	Compare the results of a replacement before you rename

The sources that Microsoft's documentation lists for the names are the file creation date and time, counters, random strings and photo metadata. The transaction date, counterparty and amount written inside a PDF are not among them. To put those in the names, you type them one by one, or rearrange text that is already in the original file names with search and replace.

PowerToys has to be installed, and runs on 64-bit Windows 11, or Windows 10 version 2004 or later. It can be installed from the Microsoft Store and other sources (Microsoft's documentation). On a company PC, installing software may need an administrator's permission.

We checked the PowerRename documentation in English. We have not checked the labels on an actual Windows screen.

Methods that work on Windows

Method	Install needed?	How the date, counterparty and amount get in
Rename in File Explorer	No	You open the PDF, read it and type, one file at a time
PowerRename (PowerToys)	Yes	It can add the creation date and counters. For the transaction date, counterparty and amount, you type them or replace text in the original names
Windows software (for example, I-O DATA's "Meimei-kun")	Yes	The software reads the file contents
A browser tool that renames in bulk from a CSV list	No	From a list you prepare (date, counterparty, amount)
A browser tool that reads the PDF contents (Dencho Rename)	No	The tool reads the text inside the PDF, and you check and fix it in a table

What each method does and how to choose are covered in comparing the methods. Details of other products were checked on each company's official page on 2026-09-27.

Bulk-rename PDFs on Windows with Dencho Rename

Open the tool page in Edge or Chrome
Select the PDFs in File Explorer and drag them onto the browser window
The date, counterparty and amount appear in a table. Check them against the PDF preview on screen, and fix any that are wrong
Choose the order of the name and the date format (the default is date_counterparty_amount)
Press download to save the renamed PDFs as a ZIP (a single file is saved as a PDF)

To unzip the saved ZIP, right-click it in File Explorer, choose Extract All and follow the instructions. To take out a single file, open the ZIP and drag the file to another place (Microsoft Support).

On Windows, file names cannot contain the nine characters \ / : * ? " < > |, and cannot end with a space or a period (Microsoft's documentation). When a counterparty name or another field contains these characters, Dencho Rename replaces them with a hyphen, and it drops periods and spaces at the end of the name.

The PDFs are processed only inside your browser and are never sent to a server. There is nothing to install and no sign-up. The tool is built to run in the latest Edge and Chrome. Reading has been checked in Chrome and Safari on a Mac, and has not yet been checked on a Windows screen. If something does not work, please tell us through Feedback.

Find files by the names you gave

Open the folder that holds the PDFs in File Explorer and type a date such as 202609 or a counterparty name in the search box to find files in that folder. Searching from This PC is slower but more thorough (Microsoft Support).

Text in the middle of a name, such as a counterparty name, is sometimes not found by a plain search (reported by users on Microsoft Q&A). In that case, type something like System.FileName:~="Sample" in the search box to find files whose names contain "Sample" (the "contains" operator in Microsoft's documentation; we have not checked this on a Windows screen).

Searching by a range of dates or amounts cannot be done with a file name search alone. Putting the three items in the file name assumes that you will respond to a tax official's request to download the data, which stands in for range and combined searches (National Tax Agency Q&A, Q50). If you want to be able to filter by range, make an index book (how to make an index book, the search requirement explained).

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to install anything on Windows?

No. Just open the page in Edge or Chrome. No sign-up is needed either.

How many files can I process at once?

On the free plan, up to 5 files can be in the table. After saving, clear them from the table and process the next 5. The paid plan (480 yen a month or 3,980 yen a year) has no limit, and you can line up a few hundred files at once.

Can I use it on a company PC?

There is nothing to install, so you can use it if you can open this site in Edge or Chrome. The PDFs are processed only inside your browser and are never sent to a server. If your company restricts which sites you can open, check with your administrator.

What should I do if the ZIP will not open?

File Explorer on Windows 11 treats the whole ZIP as invalid and will not open it if even one file inside has a name of 260 bytes or more (the blog of Microsoft Japan's Windows support team). A Japanese character takes 3 bytes, so a name written only in Japanese reaches that at about 86 characters. Dencho Rename cuts names (without the extension) to 240 bytes, so it does not make names that long. If a ZIP made with another tool will not open for this reason, you can unzip it with the methods in the blog, such as PowerShell's Expand-Archive or 7-Zip.

Can I combine it with File Explorer or PowerRename?

Yes. As long as the order and format of the names are the same for every file, it does not matter which tool gave them. For example, after naming files with Dencho Rename, you can fix how a counterparty is written in all of them with PowerRename's search and replace.

If I give the ZIP to someone on a Mac, will Japanese file names be garbled?

We checked that file names containing Japanese counterparty names in a ZIP made by Dencho Rename are not garbled when unzipped with the Mac's built-in Archive Utility (macOS 15).

Is anything needed besides the file name?

The file name covers the search requirement. Keeping electronic transaction data also requires measures against tampering, such as setting internal rules and following them (the search requirement explained, file naming rules).

Try Dencho Rename

No sign-up and nothing to install. Open it in Edge or Chrome on Windows, and for PDFs with embedded text you can read and rename up to 5 files at a time for free.

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