Why does a PDF have a title as well as a file name?

Because they belong to different things. The file name belongs to your disk and changes when anybody drags the file about; the title belongs to the document and travels with it. Readers show the title in the tab, search engines print it in results, and filing systems index it — which is how a file called contract.pdf ends up appearing everywhere as ‘Microsoft Word - draft3’.

Can I rename a whole folder of files at once?

Not here — this takes one file, deliberately. For a folder, your own operating system’s rename is faster and safer than uploading a hundred documents to change their names.

Which characters are not allowed in the name?

Slashes, and the set Windows forbids: colon, asterisk, question mark, double quotation mark, angle brackets and the pipe. They are removed rather than rejected, and the notes tell you the name that was used.

Does renaming change anything inside the document?

Only if you leave the title option on, in which case the title is set and the file is written out again. With it off, the exact bytes you uploaded come back under a new name.

Will a better name help the PDF show up in search results?

The title helps, because it is what most engines print and one of the things they read. The file name matters much less than the words in the document, and neither is a substitute for the document being about what somebody searched for.

Rename a PDF and set the title inside it to match

A folder full of scan_0043.pdf is unsearchable, and the file name is the only part of a PDF most people ever see. A document also carries a title inside it — that is what a reader puts in its tab and what a search engine prints in its results — and the two are almost always out of step. This sets both. If only the name changes, the bytes you uploaded are handed straight back rather than re-saved, so nothing inside the document moves.

It renames one file per run. There is no batch rename and no naming pattern, because a pattern applied to the wrong folder is a mess nobody can unpick.

Rename a PDF

No account. Your upload is deleted after 2 hours, the result after 24 hours.

Choose file

Loading Rename PDF…

How it works

Type the name you want. Leave off the .pdf — that gets added. Slashes and the characters Windows will not accept in a file name are stripped, and the notes tell you when that happened rather than failing the job.
Decide about the title inside the document. Leave ‘use it as the document title too’ on unless the document already has a title worth keeping. It is the field readers show in their tab and search engines print in their results.
Download it. If you asked only for a new file name, the bytes are the ones you uploaded, untouched. If you asked for the title as well, the document is saved again with the new title in it.

What the options do

The form above lists the options this tool is running today, straight from the server. This is what they are for.

New file name: The name the download will carry, without the extension. Think about how it will sort in a folder: ‘2026-03-11 Acme invoice 1042’ files itself and ‘Invoice from Acme (final) (2)’ does not. Slashes, colons, asterisks, question marks, quotation marks, angle brackets and pipes cannot appear in a Windows file name, so they are removed and the notes report the name that was actually used.
Use it as the document title too: On by default. The title is what a reader shows in its tab and what a search engine prints instead of the file name, so keeping the two in step saves explaining later. Turn it off when the document has a proper title of its own — a report called ‘Annual Review 2025’ should keep that even if you are filing it as 2025-annual-review.

What this tool does not do

It renames one file per run. There is no batch rename and no naming pattern, because a pattern applied to the wrong folder is a mess nobody can unpick.
It does not read the document to suggest a name. There is no ‘name it after the invoice number’ here.
It does not touch the author, subject or keywords. Edit metadata does those.
With the title option on the document is saved again, so a digital signature will not verify afterwards. With it off, the original bytes come back and a signature survives.
Where the file also carried a title in an XMP block, that block is removed so the two copies cannot disagree.

What happens to your file

The file is uploaded because Rename PDF runs on our server rather than in the browser tab. It is kept for at most 2 hours and the result you download for 24 hours, then a scheduled job deletes both — a job has to be able to read the file while it runs, and you have to be able to retry a failed conversion without re-uploading. Neither needs longer.

Nothing about the contents is logged, and no one reads your documents. The retention page lists the same numbers the code enforces, and the privacy policy says who can reach the storage they sit in.

Questions

Why does a PDF have a title as well as a file name?: Because they belong to different things. The file name belongs to your disk and changes when anybody drags the file about; the title belongs to the document and travels with it. Readers show the title in the tab, search engines print it in results, and filing systems index it — which is how a file called contract.pdf ends up appearing everywhere as ‘Microsoft Word - draft3’.
Can I rename a whole folder of files at once?: Not here — this takes one file, deliberately. For a folder, your own operating system’s rename is faster and safer than uploading a hundred documents to change their names.
Which characters are not allowed in the name?: Slashes, and the set Windows forbids: colon, asterisk, question mark, double quotation mark, angle brackets and the pipe. They are removed rather than rejected, and the notes tell you the name that was used.
Does renaming change anything inside the document?: Only if you leave the title option on, in which case the title is set and the file is written out again. With it off, the exact bytes you uploaded come back under a new name.
Will a better name help the PDF show up in search results?: The title helps, because it is what most engines print and one of the things they read. The file name matters much less than the words in the document, and neither is a substitute for the document being about what somebody searched for.

Guides that use this tool

Written for the problem rather than the tool: what is actually going wrong, and what to do about it whether or not you end up here.

Does renaming a PDF change what is inside? — No — unless the tool also writes the new name into the document title. That one difference decides whether a signature still verifies afterwards.
Does renaming a signed PDF break the signature? — The file name sits outside the byte range the certificate covers, so an operating system rename is harmless. Writing that name into metadata is not.
Split a payslip print run into one file each — A 400-page export where an employee spans two sheets defeats any tool cutting every N pages. Match on the words instead, and name the outputs as you go.
Why does my old PDF title still show up after I changed it? — You edited the title, saved, and the old one is still in the browser tab. A PDF stores its title in two places, and most tools only change one.

Edit PDF metadata — Change the title, author, subject and keywords a PDF reports — the fields a document management system indexes and a reader shows in Properties.
Split PDF by bookmarks — Split at the document’s own bookmarks, naming each part after its bookmark.
Merge PDF — Combine several PDFs into one file, in the order you arrange them.
Repair PDF — Rebuild a damaged PDF page by page and report what could not be recovered.
Compress PDF — Make a PDF smaller by re-encoding the images inside it, leaving text sharp.
To change the words on the page rather than the pages themselves, use the PDF editor.

Put documents together

Take documents apart

Make a file smaller or a scan straighter

Get the contents out of a PDF

Make a PDF out of something else

Fix how the pages sit on the paper

Put something on every page

Control what can be done with the file

Tidy up the document itself