How to: Rename a Directory in Visual Basic

Article
11/16/2012

The RenameDirectory method of the My.Computer.FileSystem object can be used to rename a directory by supplying the current location and name of the directory, along with the new name for the directory. This method cannot be used to move a directory; use the MoveDirectory method to move and rename the directory.

To rename a directory

Use the My.Computer.FileSystem.RenameDirectory method to rename a directory. The following code renames the Test directory to SecondTest.
```
My.Computer.FileSystem.RenameDirectory("C:MyDocuments\Test", _
"SecondTest")
```

This code example is also available as an IntelliSense code snippet. In the code snippet picker, the example is located in File system - Processing Drives, Folders, and Files. For more information, see How to: Insert Snippets Into Your Code (Visual Basic).

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The following conditions can cause an exception:

The path is not valid for one of the following reasons: it is a zero-length string, it contains only white space, it contains invalid characters, or it is a device path (starts with \\.\) (ArgumentException).
newName contains path information (ArgumentException).
The path is not valid because it is Nothing (ArgumentNullException).
newName is Nothing or an empty string (ArgumentNullException).
The source directory is not valid or does not exist (DirectoryNotFoundException).
There is an existing file or folder with the name specified in newName (IOException).
The folder is a root folder (IOException).
The path exceeds the system-defined maximum length (PathTooLongException).
A file or folder name in the path contains a colon (:) or is in an invalid format (NotSupportedException).
The user lacks necessary permissions to view the path (SecurityException).
The user does not have required permission (UnauthorizedAccessException).

How to: Rename a Directory in Visual Basic

To rename a directory

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