I have a series of notes organized with titles like COD.01.00, COD.01.01, COD.01.02, COD.01.03, and so on. The issue I’m facing is that whenever I need to insert a new note (e.g., COD.01.01), I have to manually renumber all the subsequent notes, incrementing each by one. This process is quite cumbersome especially when there are a lot of subsequent notes within that category. Is there a way to automate this task or a built-in tool that can help streamline it?
Things I have tried
I tried using the Bulk Rename plugin, but I realized it only changes the note names and cannot perform the necessary task of incrementing the note names.
I do not know of a solution other than scripting something at the level of the operating system. In order to avoid this issue, and the need to continuously update note names and accordingly links to these notes, the classical Zettelkasten system adopted a numbering scheme of “branching”. If a new note appears to belong after “COD.01.00”, that note would be named ‘COD.01.00a’, a subsequent one to that as ‘COD.01.00b’, etc. This approach allowed to organize new notes in the “neighborhood” of existing notes without renaming notes and without a need to update thousands of links, a task that is impossible to keep up with when working with a system of notes on physical cards.
Ask yourself why you want to achieve this, and what your broader goal is which you intent now to fulfill with this system. There may be different, better strategies to achieve what you want.