After searching for a while for a simple way to automate the process of renaming scanned PDF files, I came across A-PDF Rename.

I have to regularly scan a large number of equipment borrowing forms and have had to go through one by one and rename them based on the borrower. This tool allows you to select a part of the PDF you’re interested (in my case, the name of the borrower) and map it to be the new file name.

In testing it’s been pretty good so far. If the document is poorly scanned it sometimes misses some data, but it’s a LOT better than doing it by hand!

I found a few other solutions, but most seem to be out of date or rather complex to implement for a non-coder. This tool can run from the command line if needed, but has a nice GUI for visual people like me (and works in batch mode which is important).