rename (clean up) files with dates in them

I'd like to clean up a lot of files I have by giving them better file names.

I'd like to be able to have a file that is now called: "Italy January 2013" to "Italy 2013-01" and the like for various years and months. (Possibly even files with days in their names where "Rome January 13 2013" gets renamed to "Rome 2013-01-13".)

I see a lot of the renaming options but nothing just like this.

I would also be happy to do it straight in the Finder with AppleScript too if anyone has a solution.

Thanks in advance!

Use "Name matches" and use a date token to match the date in the name. You can then use that date token in your Rename action. Clicking on it there will give you options to reformat the date however you want.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's still not very clear to a new user. I'll try to read through the docs again but don't understand the flow between processing a file in a watched folder and automatically renaming it. e.g. There is a file called "Italy December 2013" and I would like it to be renamed to "Italy 2013.12". The idea is that it would convert the month name to a numerical value and then format that with the year in the order preferred.

The date token will handle that. Once you capture the date, you can add it where needed and format it however you want, including converting between numerical and textual months.