Power Automate Desktop (PAD) is Microsoft’s free desktop automation tool. It is included with Windows 11 and can be downloaded for Windows 10. You build flows by dragging actions — no code — and it is ideal for boring file chores.

In this example we will take every report in the Downloads folder that starts with “Sales”, add today’s date to its name, and move it to a folder for the current month.

1. Create the flow

Open Power Automate, sign in with your Microsoft account, and click New flow. Name it “Sort sales reports”.

2. Add the actions

1. Get current date and time (Date time group) → stores %CurrentDateTime%.
2. Convert datetime to text → custom format yyyy-MM-dd → variable %Today%. Add a second one with format yyyy-MM → %Month%.
3. Create folder → parent: C:\Reports, name: %Month%. (If it already exists, PAD simply continues.)
4. Get files in folder → folder: your Downloads, file filter: Sales*.xlsx → %Files%.
5. For each %CurrentItem% in %Files%:
   • Rename file(s) → “Add text”, text _%Today%, after the name.
   • Move file(s) → destination C:\Reports\%Month%, if file exists: “Do nothing” or “Overwrite”.

3. Test it

Put two sample files in Downloads and press Run. Watch the variables pane on the right — it shows exactly what each action produced, which makes debugging easy.

Where to go next

• Add Launch Excel + Read from Excel worksheet to process the files after sorting.
• Use the built-in Outlook actions to email a summary.
• Schedule it: desktop flows can be triggered from cloud flows (this needs a paid licence in most organisations).

Prefer code? The same job in Python takes about ten lines — see merge Excel files with Python. For Excel-only automation, VBA is still king: Excel VBA tutorials.