For some reason, that previous thread is not loading any of my replies. Or maybe it is but I'm not seeing them!

In any case, what you sent me last night is perfect, I was going to the wrong menu!

When I go to "actions" I have the two "sample folder rename" actions that you've made for me. I can see that now.

But I have that separate list (behind the "I..." button), that contains some other things I use (& I'm not sure what the difference is, but...) that has a different "folder rename" item that I was running earlier & which is the screen shot in the previous post (with the tokens in) & which is the thing that didn't work.

So, all is good!

I was being a dufus.

Again.

And here's the other menu (which is the menu that I thought stored the actions that affected things that aren't ID Tags & that's why I looked here earlier).

When looking at the action I did see a potential issue ... so I've uploaded:

https://2manyrobots.com/actions/Snowdog--Sample-folder-rename---v3.zip

It will install an action named Snowdog: Sample folder rename - v3.0. You should delete the old one by going to the Action Manager (Actions>Action Manager); selecting the old one and doing. Move to Trash from the context menu. Rename it to something that makes sense to you.

All actions appear in the Action Manager. All actions which are not marked as hidden appear on the Actions>User Defined menu. As a convenience you can manually place actions on various other menus where it makes sense. As this action renames I placed it on the rename menu in the Action Manager. That's why it's on the File>Rename>Actions menu. It's the same action ... it just appears in more than one place. The final control; renaming; deleting, etc. is always done in the Action Manager

As far as the rename template goes. Rename templates are used for all renaming operations. The templates have a fair amount of built in tokens which help you construct the rename pattern. In cases where the tokens do not allow you to do what you want (such as splitting the numbers), you have to write an action to construct the pattern. The templates have tokens for each of the 16 track variables accessible on a per file basis when an action is running. That's how you feed non standard data into the template. In this action I'm placing the desired folder name into Variable 2. The template essentially says that it's renaming a folder by using the pattern in Variable 2. This is what we want. If you delete it, the action will give you errors.

I apologize for the forum issues. It was old when first installed about ten years ago and is currently supported by glue and chicken wire. Switching forums at this point would be a nightmare and cost prohibitive.

Brrrrm-tssshhh! Success!

Now to the action, because I think we might still be talking at crossed porpoises. (Or rather, you're going to great pains to explain stuff & I'm not getting it.)

I have the V3 (thank you) & I've added it. I can see it in my Actions & I can see it in my Rename list, in a fly-out sub-menu:

I can't look at the V3 action in the Rename list in preferences (see below) because it's not shown, so I can't open it to see what it looks like (although I can look at the full action via the actions manager).

What I can do is open what looks to be an incomplete action which is at the bottom of the list in the drop down Rename menu in the first screen shot above. (That's the one I tried to run earlier that wouldn't work because I was getting my knickers in a twist.)

Now that I have the V3 Rename action & it works perfectly, I'm wondering, that last one is not one you've written for me, is it? I mean, when you look at that, does it make sense to you or is it just a nonsense thing that I can throw away?

Ah, well that all makes perfect sense. Thanks. (I thought it was some half-assed thing I'd attempted at some point.)

So that means that some of the templates in the list might also be "un-hidden" components of other Actions?

I'm trying to keep things tidy, you see. I don't want to throw away anything useful (although I suppose I could just hide anything I don't use) but I would like to delete pointless things that I've tried & that didn't work, or possibly rename anything that made sense at the time but needs a more descriptive name going forward, so that I know what it is & can make use of it.

I managed to make a couple of rename templates based on the on line documentation so I should probably start by having another read & seeing if I can make sense of the ones I have. 😀