As a novice to linux, I have spent hours trying to set up a vpn on a raspberry pi. I have reformatted the sd card and re installed raspian several times.

Now, suddenly after having entered this code:
cp -r /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/2.0 /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa
I am getting this error message
cp: cannot stat ‘/usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/2.0’: No such file or directory

On previous set up attempts I have got way past this point. Does reformatting the card clear everything that I need to clear, or is there something else hidden within the pi?

As always any help would be appreciated

You may have missed installing a package.

All the error is telling you is that the directory /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/2.0 doesn't exist.