bulk file renaming (intention is to shorten filenames)

basically l have over 50 files that lm unable to download to the location l wish to on my laptop (each file is about a gig), however their filenames are quite long which leads me to the 255 character limit.

my intention was to originally use winscp to batch rename but lm not sure of the syntax, so my next idea is to download them to the rood of my C: drive and batch rename from there.

basically l wish to shorten the filenames rather than completely rename, currently the filenames have a unique 5 character alphanumeric prefix followed by the rest of the filename and extension eg SW854-filename.ext, l wish to retain part of the file name so l can still reference the files to my database and keep within windows filesystem limitations essentially l wish to output something like this SW854.ext especially seeing as l plan to move to an external drive once lm done processing the files.

is there any way to achieve shortening filenames while retaining important information? any solutions to achieving this would be appreciated.

Free Commander XE should be able to handle what you wish to achieve.
Downloads

After trying many alternatives with varying degrees of ease-of-use, I've been using Rename Master 2.8.1 (small, free, portable [but a setup is also included, if wanted]) for years because it's been so efficient.

I love that it's portable because, when I've found a great program, I like to carry it around with me... just in case.

I went to check on the author's website and found that Rename Master is now up to version 3.13 so I'm going to give that a spin instead. (Thanks for the question... because otherwise I would never have thought to check. )

Hope this helps...

thanks for the replies, they have been very helpful.

There is this as well Enable or Disable Win32 Long Paths in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

even better, thanks.

Finally...