Automatically renaming PDFs based on Revit schedule data

Let’s say you have printed a bunch of PDFs to a folder, hopefully using one of the techniques described in my previous two posts (links below), and now you want to rename them to match the data exported from a Revit schedule?
Part 1
Part 2

Here is one method:

1. Create a Revit schedule with all the data you need.
2. Export the schedule, such that you have a file like this one (view the sample)
3. Now, open the cool excel spreadsheet that I’m providing here for download.  This file works for 3 columns of data.  Basically, it just joins the data from the 3 columns into one cell (and adds some hyphens and brackets).
4. Open the exported Revit schedule in Excel.  You will need to choose file type – ‘All files’ and go through the steps to convert to the schedule to a spreadsheet.
5. Copy all the cells from the Revit schedule spreadsheet and paste into the cell in the Rename-files-using-schedule-data.xls file
6. You will notice that the 3 columns have been joined into one in Column A.
7. Copy the data from Column A and go to a new blank worksheet (can be in the same file).
8. Paste the data using the ‘Paste Special’ command and choose ‘values’.  This data is now ‘clean’ and can be used for renaming purposes.
9. Copy this ‘clean’ data into a Notepad txt file and save as whatever you like.  Sample file for download here.
10. This TXT file is now used in the Advanced Renamer program.  Install it if you haven’t already.
11. Open Advanced Renamer.
12. Add – Method – List
    
13. Then click ‘Load List’ and select the TXT file that you made.
14. Also, under the ‘Rename Files’ box, choose ‘Add – Directory’ and choose the location where your PDFs are located.
15. You should now see the previous filenames along with the ‘proposed’ filenames.
16. If you are happy, click ‘Start Batch’

 As I said, this technique is really not for the fainthearted.  But it sure has saved me a lot of time!  I hope you find it useful.

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