Thanks for these suggestions, but I have tried both drop rename & ABFR:
neither have facility to keep file extensions intact

any other suggestions?

thanks
Greg

>> I have been trialing some re-naming utilities, some of which do some very
>> impressive things... but the one's i've tried don't seem to be able to
>> rename a file without losing the extension (eg: DSC0023.jpg -->
>> picture.jpg)... i would have thought this would be a basic feature!
>> 
>> any recommendations would be much appreciated - standalone or CMM style, i'm
>> not fussy
> 
> Try Drop*Rename
> 
> <http://www.chaoticsoftware.com/ProductPages/DropRename.html>
> 
> Have fun,
> Shay