Remove special characters from all file names within a folder

[JoinintTheDots]

Hello brains trust, I hope you can help me, please.

I have a number of documents to upload into a system that does not permit upload where file names contain special characters, being: / : * ? " <> | # { } % ~ &"."

Is there a VB script I can use to cycle through all the files in a folder and remove all of the above characters from the file names, but otherwise leave them the same? The characters do not necessarily appear in the same position in each file name, so functions using specific character positions won't work.

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Cheers
Dots

[jdc2000]

Possibly useful link:

https://superuser.com/questions/1224...and-subfolders

The script could easily be modified to remove any character NOT in a string of characters that you supply (upper and lower case letters, digits, and a space).

[JoinintTheDots]

Possibly useful link:

https://superuser.com/questions/1224...and-subfolders

The script could easily be modified to remove any character NOT in a string of characters that you supply (upper and lower case letters, digits, and a space).

Thank you for the suggestion. I am not very experienced with VB, but attempting to run the code referred to in the linked article produces the following error message:

Compile error: Invalid outside procedure.

[Zvoni]

Hello brains trust, I hope you can help me, please.

I have a number of documents to upload into a system that does not permit upload where file names contain special characters, being: / : * ? " <> | # { } % ~ &"."

Is there a VB script I can use to cycle through all the files in a folder and remove all of the above characters from the file names, but otherwise leave them the same? The characters do not necessarily appear in the same position in each file name, so functions using specific character positions won't work.

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Cheers
Dots

... and i really doubt, that all of those characters appear in your filenames, since with the exception of the tilde ("~") i'm pretty sure, they are ILLEGAL in Filenames on Windows (except the dot "." with the caveat that a dot is allowed, but the filename is not allowed to start with it)

[JoinintTheDots]

Thanks @Zvoni, however the area that is doing the work is also dealing with historical files, not just current ones and the system to which they are uploading is a bespoke application.

It doesn't change the nature of the question, however - the code will look pretty similar aside from the string of special characters it needs to filter. I know for a fact that some file names do have a # in them and others have one or more "."

[jdc2000]

To eliminate the error, try this:

Option Explicit

Dim sNewFile

Set objFso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Browsefolder objFso.GetFolder("C:\Users\user\Desktop\test")

Sub Browsefolder(Folder)
    For Each Subfolder In Folder.Subfolders
        Browsefolder Subfolder
    Next
    For Each File In Folder.Files
        sNewFile = File.Name
        sNewFile = Replace(sNewFile, "ç", "+")
        If (sNewFile <> File.Name) Then
            File.Move (File.ParentFolder & "\" & sNewFile)
        End If
    Next
End Sub

Note that you would need to add code to make sure that you do not remove the rightmost "." for the file extension if you update this to remove the "." characters.

[JoinintTheDots]

Hi @jdc2000 - thank you for responding. Unfortunately, I am still getting the "Compile error: Invalid outside procedure" error for the first "Set" command when I run the code.

Also, any advice on retaining the right-most "." before the file extension would be appreciated.

Thanks again for your help!

[jdc2000]

Try this:

Option Explicit

Dim sNewFile, objFso

Set objFso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Browsefolder objFso.GetFolder("C:\Users\user\Desktop\test")

Sub Browsefolder(Folder)
    For Each Subfolder In Folder.Subfolders
        Browsefolder Subfolder
    Next
    For Each File In Folder.Files
        sNewFile = File.Name
        sNewFile = Replace(sNewFile, "ç", "+")
        If (sNewFile <> File.Name) Then
            File.Move (File.ParentFolder & "\" & sNewFile)
        End If
    Next
End Sub

To avoid replacing the rightmost ".", you could use InStrRev to get the position (assuming that there is a "."), and then not replace the "." at that position.