How to rename / move a project in Intellij Idea 12?

Question

As stated here one can change the name of a project. However, it only changes the name of the project and it will not change the folder structure.

As an example if your project is called sample1 and it resides ~/user1/development/IdeaProjects/sample1, the folder location won't be changed to ~/user1/development/IdeaProjects/sample2 if one changes the project name to sample2.

Solution 1

It seems that one has to right click on the project (after following the instructions to rename the Project), then choose Refactor -> Move to relocate project to the new location. I didn't find any solution to rename and move a project at once.

Solution 2

1. Right click on project, then Refactor -> Rename... (shift+F6), set desired name
2. Close IntelliJ
3. Rename directory in your filesystem to your desired name
4. In startup dialog select Open (or File -> Open... in main window)
5. Please select renamed project directory

Enjoy, it work's for me!

Solution 3

1. Close IntelliJ
2. Rename the folder in Explorer (Windows) / Finder (OSX)
3. Open IntelliJ
4. Import Project from Dialog, or File -> Import Project
5. Select the folder with the new name
6. Follow the dialogues

Solution 4

1. Go to File then Project Structure
2. Under Project Settings -> Project make sure that you change the project name.
3. Then under Project Settings -> Modules change the name there as well.
4. Restart Intellij
5. Use your File Explorer to confirm that the project/modules have been renamed.

Solution 5

If it is a gradle project, instead of renaming it using Refactor->Rename :

• set the rootProject.name variable in the settings.gradle file to the new project name.
• reimport the project. Hit the 'Refresh all Gradle Projects' button in the Gradle Tool Window.

Then follow steps 2 to 5 in @Dawid's answer.

To remove the old project from IntelliJ's list of managed projects:

• select File->Open Recent->Manage Projects..
• click the 'x' next to the old project name

View more solutions

Comments

[Adam Toth]

It doesn't rename the project folder only moves it. So ultimately you probably have to do that manually

[null]

Answering with shortcut key is a bad answer as everyone can change the keymap.

[bolec_kolec]

This doesn't help. It doesn't change of the project folder. Instead of this it creates a new one with a new name and moves there. The old folder of the project folder is inside a new one.

[Demian]

Does not work, all the module settings get reimported with Intellij best guesses

[Tomáš Záluský]

Works for me in Idea 2017.1, just beware: (1) moving might be slow (I waited for approx. 15m for 471MB project with 16000+ files), (2) for one project, new git root was not detected (but it's easy to correct in Version Control Settings)

[z33k]

It works...in a way. I mean this workaround let's you refactor both the IntelliJ metainfo and the folder structure on disk, but it doesn't address anything that probably stays in the main user configuration folder (~/.IdeaIC2017.3 in my case). So anyone going with this solution is bound to be haunted by some ghost projects in some IntelliJ dialogues later

[stephanmg]

The common sense answer. I think we should upvote this. (IJ 2019.3 Community)