Word2003 Date Created anomaly

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ChrisGreaves
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Word2003 Date Created anomaly

Post by ChrisGreaves »

I ran across this this morning. I know that from the days of DOS values for "date Last Accessed" are pretty well meaningless, but I had not realized that the Date of Creation was variable!
These two snapshots were taken within about ten seconds, from the same document.
Cheers
Chris
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HansV
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Re: Word2003 Date Created anomaly

Post by HansV »

Did you copy or move the document today, or used Save As on it?
Best wishes,
Hans

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Charles Kenyon
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Re: Word2003 Date Created anomaly

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Save As will re-write Date Created.

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John Gray
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Re: Word2003 Date Created anomaly

Post by John Gray »

My usual suggestion is to read Kan Yabumoto*'s XXCOPY Technical Note 15: Windows File Date and Time

* d. 2017 :sad:
John Gray

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ChrisGreaves
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Re: Word2003 Date Created anomaly

Post by ChrisGreaves »

HansV wrote:
01 Jun 2021, 11:31
Did you copy or move the document today, or used Save As on it?
yes and no.
This document is a "blog" of a non-computer project.
When I make progress on the project, I load the document into word, add text and images, then save it, usually by a timed save, but sometimes by exit from Word.
I do not issue saveAs.

In my past life I used saveAs to clone one document to another, but for the past couple of years I have tried to train myself to start a new document (File,New) and then issue a saveAs on that document, so that the Creation date has some veracity.

For this particular "blog" document ("diary/journal") it would have been created April 23rd, updated at least once every other day (roughly), including today.

This document was moved about one or two weeks ago when I set up a separate folder for it. I had three such projects in a folder and thought to isolate each of them, so created three sub-folders, one for each project, and dragged the three blogs into their respective folder.
I can't recall creating a new document during this process.

Cheers
Chris
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: Word2003 Date Created anomaly

Post by ChrisGreaves »

Charles Kenyon wrote:
01 Jun 2021, 11:52
Save As will re-write Date Created.
Thank you, Charles.
In that case I shall say that I must have issued a saveAs at some time in the past, although I can't recall doing so.

As you will have worked out, I have nothing critical riding on this, since I have learned not to trust Date Created under Windows/DOS for years.

This morning I was puzzled by the strangeness of two different values in the same document only ten seconds apart, with no apparent saveAs, close, reboot etc intervening.

Cheers
Chris
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: Word2003 Date Created anomaly

Post by ChrisGreaves »

John Gray wrote:
01 Jun 2021, 13:24
My usual suggestion is to read Kan Yabumoto*'s XXCOPY Technical Note 15: Windows File Date and Time
Thank you John. I suspect that this is the document that I read many years ago, that weaned me off almost every date characteristic except "Date Last Modified".
Still a good read after all these (25?) years.
Cheers
Chris
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