A DOS batch file (file with extension .bat) can be a very effective way to automate a series of file operations. You can schedule the batch file to run at a specific time, and automate, say, a series of operations such as copying, moving, deleting or renaming files. You can create a batch file in any text editor like notepad and just save the file with an extension of .bat. In windows, if you open a DOS prompt, type edit and hit return a retro text editor will open which you can also use.

The batch file code below will copy all microsoft excel files (.xls) from the current folder into a folder called "import" and append the current date in yyyymmdd format to the filename. Additionally the file extension is changed from .xls to csv (I am not sure how readable the csv file will be to other programs so let me know the result you get if you use it). 

In this example the batch file needs to be saved in the same directory as the Excel files.

There are many applications in using it. For example, sales people ftp their expense reports to a folder, these are swept up at the end of a day, the date appended to the filename, they are imported into a DB, the files are then moved to an archive folder.

Ok, yes, this is ugly, BUT it works, and it's not overly complicated.  The problem was: appending a "yyyymmddhhmm" to a filename that really is 12 charaters, and does not drop the "0" before 8:00 AM.  (or 3:00 PM).

Here we go:

@echo off

for /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%i in ('date/t') do set y=%%k
for /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%i in ('date/t') do set d=%%k%%i%%j
for /F "tokens=5-8 delims=:. " %%i in ('echo.^| time ^| find "current" ') do set t=%%i%%j
set t=%t%_
if "%t:~3,1%"=="_" set t=0%t%
set t=%t:~0,4%
set "theFilename=%d%%t%"
echo %theFilename%

That's it.  It works.  Thank you, thank you very much...

TheSQLWhisperer

Thank you.

I like your programming style. easy to follow and to copy. Even though I am using powershell more and more, there is always some reason to come back to batchfiles.

Thanks again,

Dan  

Great! This is the greatest thing I came accross on the net today. i have searched this information on the net for weeks now.

But I have a little problem. Please can someone help!

I needed to copy a set of folders from a network drive to a local hard disk drive on my computer, with the date appended. How can I tweak the batch program so that it performs this funtion?. Thank you very much

Excellent! And very useful for me.

Thank you very much.

Excellent bit if work. Thank you all for your comments.

After I used this I also found another method which is a tad on the simple side:

@echo off

REM Create a log file with the current date and time in the filename

REM     the ~4 in the Date skips the first four characters of the echoed date stamp and writes the remainder and so on

set LOG_FILE_NAME=Example_File_Name.%date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%%date:~10,4%.%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%.txt

Echo This is much easier in UNIX > c: emp\%LOG_FILE_NAME%

:exit

i managed to modify this code slightly to achieve what i wanted. it is well written and was easy to understand for someone who doesnt do a lot of batch programming, all i had to do was cut and paste to the front of my existing code, reorder and rename some stuff, test and it works great. thanks

@echo off
@For /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Day=%%A
Set Month=%%B
Set Year=%%C
Set All=%%C%%B%%A
)

copy b1*.csv bin1merge%All%.csv
copy b2*.csv bin2merge%All%.csv
copy b3*.csv bin3merge%All%.csv
copy r1*.csv rfid1merge%All%.csv
copy r2*.csv rfid2merge%All%.csv
copy r3*.csv rfid3merge%All%.csv

Hi,

I like the script.

I am having a problem adding the Seconds (time)

I get the following lbicc_20100329_1458.txt

The below doesn't seem to work???

@Echo Off
@For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Day=%%A
Set Month=%%B
Set Year=%%C
Set All=%%C%%B%%A
)
@For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=: " %%A in ('Time /t') do @(
Set Hour=%%A
Set Min=%%B
Set Sec=%%C
Set Allm=%%A%%B%%C
)
@For %%a in ("*.txt") do copy %%a "import\%%~na_%All%_%Allm%.txt"

Thanks

Cliff

What a marvelous thing you have posted, I very much appreciated that you have taken the time and effort to do this. With a little tweaking, I was able to make this do exactly what I wanted! Thank you very, very much!

Doug R., Calgary, Canada

For windows 2003 server you need a little bit of a code change, try this

@echo off
@For /F "tokens=1,2,3,4 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Day=%%A
Set Date=%%B
Set Month=%%C
Set Year=%%D
Set All=%%A-%%B-%%C-%%D
)

That was very simple to understand and its helped me a lot

thanks you kay

Thanks... here is mod I did to rename and get year on end

@Echo Off
@For /F "tokens=1,2,3,4 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Day=%%A
Set Month=%%B
Set Year=%%C
Set Year=%%D
Set All=%%A%%B%%C%%D
)
@For %%a in ("*.jpg") do rename %%a "%%~na_%All%.jpg"

I added the D token so its now day month date year on add on date to file... thanks for great code I looked a long time...

thanks again

Vistronic

THANK YOU very much for this information!!  It has helped me today.

Thank you for your time in developing this.  By making just a few small adjustments I was able to adapt the script for my own needs.  You have saved me much time and I am extremely grateful.

THANK YOU!

The code below will give you the result though, admittedly, it's not very elegant 

Hello. I really like that small batch file. Can you tell me how to get the hour and minute to appear in the file name as well as everything else you listed? I tried playing around with the Set time command but my batch file knowledge is almost nil.   Thanks.

In response to my problem below, I figured out how to tweak it - tokens needed to be changed to 2,3,4 and reordered the variables. This should give the expected yyyymmdd

@For /F "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Month=%%A
Set Day=%%B
Set Year=%%C
Set All=%%C%%A%%B
)

I need this exact functionality but the results of the batch are not as expected/stated in your post...

When i run it today Monday, 12/17/07 the part it appends is 1712Mon.  Run from Server 2003.  Any ideas?