Automatically change File Extensions?

Apologizes if I have posted this in the wrong section… noob to the forum!

Currently working a project at work and I have nearly a 1000 documents that were created in Word and saved as .doc extension. I have to copy each document into WordPad and save the document as an .rtf extension. Is there a way to automate this process in a ‘relatively’ easy way? :confused

FYI… The reason I have to pull the document into WordPad is to strip out all the formatting from the Word documents along with keeping the file size small. I have already changed the regkeys for file size issue with Word by changing the string value to 0 for the Export Picture Metafile… but that didn’t help enough. After I fix these 1000+ documents, I will probably end up getting more later on and would like something (like a bat file or anything really) to do this quickly. Thanks for your time and ideas!!

 

Only verified for Win 7, but worth a look:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Rename-file-extensions-in-c8e7ab6e

 

You could try doing it in the command prompt. Maybe copying them to name.rtf to make sure they are properly copied and then deleting the original .doc after verifying. I could give you the commands to try if you can give specifics.

Which OS are you working in? And do you know the location of the folder where the documents are stored? Something like C:\Users\username\...

Edit: Cipher's bat file looks simple and more what you were looking for without complications.

 

Thank you both.
I will give Cipher's idea a try and see how it turns out.
Currently the OS is XP SP3 using Word 2007... I copied all the files to my desktop once done, I will put the new .rtf documents back in the original location.
I wouldn't mind trying the CMD prompt idea either. Thank you!!!

 

It's not mine, credit to the author... :cool

 

Renaming the files from .doc to .rtf will not achieve what you want. The files will remain the same size, but may no longer open correctly.

Also, WordPad and RTF file format will not strip all formatting; just some advanced formatting by Word. If you want to remove all formatting, then you need to save the documents as .txt files.

You can do that from Word: open the .doc file, then save it as a .txt file.

I'm sure there is a way to automate that, but you may have to write that yourself.

 

Maybe this will help: http://www.pdfzilla.com/zilla_word_to_text_converter.html ?