Rename file and append date or time stamp using batch script

I found an even easier way to do this, but have left the original post below. You can use a combination of environmental variables and substring commands to do the rename right inline. All you have to do is add the following, depending on what you want to include:

%date:~-4,4% - Year
%date:~-7,2% - Month
%date:~-10,2% - Day
%time:~-11,2% - Hours
%time:~-8,2% - Minutes
%time:~-5,2% - Seconds
%time:~-2,2% - Milliseconds

If you want to datestamp a file with YYYYMMDD, you can use the command

ren file.txt file-%date:~-4,4%%date:~-7,2%%date:~-10,2%


If you want to timestamp a file with HHMMSS (no milliseconds), you can use


ren file.txt file-%time:~-11,2%%time:~-8,2%%time:~-5,2%


Then you can also use any combination of those to create a date and time stamp if you'd like.


To see where I found this information, check it out here

Original Post

You can use a simple batch script to rename a file and add a datestamp to it. The code is below. You can modify the filename to be the path and name of the file you want. You can change "copy" to "ren" if you want to just rename the original. Leave it as "copy" if you want to create a copy of the file. You can also change the path where you add the date to the name too if you want to create a copy in a different location. Here's the example code:
C:
@ECHO OFF
for /f "tokens=2-4* delims=/ " %%a in ('DATE /T') do set THEDATE=%%c%%a%%b

copy /Y/V C:\filename.txt C:\filename%THEDATE%.txt
:end
In the code above, THEDATE is defined by variables a, b, and c. Those stand for the day, month, and year.
a = month
b = day
c = year
You can rearrange them as needed, which I already did for my purposes. The code above with show the date as yyyymmdd. You'll want to make sure the lines of code all appear on the same line. I could've posted an image with everything looking nice, but this way you can copy and paste that code which I know most will be grateful for.
The original post that helped me can be found here. There is also more code in that post that includes using the time rather than just the date.