system cannot find specified file

[Sidewinder]

Anyway, we all got royally led up the garden path

Should have stopped to smell the roses. 

You should uncheck "hide extensions for known file types" in Windows Explorer folder options to avoid any more "problems" like this one.

Or have run a dir list on the directory and seen what the actual file names were instead of using a qualifier that did not exist.

Sometimes the simplest things....

[Dias de verano]

Sometimes the simplest things....

Indeed.

[erobby]

Wow

I was expecting to see something like this in the post

set ydate=%date:~-4%
set mdate=%date:~4,2%
set ddate=%date:~7,2%

ren hope.txt %mdate%%ydate%.txt