I downloaded a jpg picture from a web site. (Okay, yeah, pr0n. Shh.) Using Firefox, right click on the image, “Save Picture As.”
The date on the file isn’t today’s date, but 1/10/2011. I copied the file and pasted it to the same location. Same date.
I opened the file in Paint and saved it. Same date! 1/10/2011, not today!
I edited the file in Paint and saved it. Same date.
I finally had to create a new (empty) picture in Paint, save it, then cut and paste the image from the weird file to the new picture, and save that! This works; the new pic has today’s date.
What makes a file’s date property “sticky” in this way, so that even copies, and even copies saved from Paint, keep the old date? Is this normal? Would Microsoft say, “It’s a feature, not a bug?”
I think you need to post a link to that file so we can investigate it ourself.
What might have happened if you had edited the file (changing even just one pixel?) and saved that to a new file using File->SaveAs instead? Would that have created a new file with a new date?
Also, if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t Winders have TWO timestamps for a file? To-wit: The date the file was originally created (which does not change thereafter, even when the file is modified), and separately, the date the file was last modified? And are you certain which of those two time-stamps you were looking at?
Have you tried the experiment with other kinds of files you might create (or download), that you view or modify with other apps like WordPad or other file-manipulating programs. I recall that in the bad old DOS days, if you simply copied a file with the COPY command, the new file would inherit the original create date from the source file. (If you copy a file in Unix or Linux with the cp command, that doesn’t happen. The copy of the file gets the time you made the copy as its create date.) It may be that each specific utility program or app may do this its own way, depending on just which system call or parameter it uses when creating the new file. – I don’t know enough details of Winders working to expound further on that.
ETA: Uh, why was it so important? Did you just happen to notice and got curious enough that you tried all those experiments?
That’s what bewilders me. Yes, that should have created a new file with a new date. I saved it with a new file name, too.
Pretty sure; the two stay the same. I never pay much attention to the create date anyway, but to the modified date.
Oh, heck yeah: I’ve been copying and modifying data, Word files, Paint jpg files, music, all sorts of stuff. I’m a fairly active user. I mostly use the Windows Explorer utility to select and copy stuff, but often I import it into an application and use “Save As” to save a modified version to a new folder.
Yep! Struck me as damn weird, and contrary to all my prior experience. I got around it, so I don’t need to know; I just can’t figure out what happened.
If it’s a JPG, Windows sometimes reads the date in the embedded metadata (IPTC/EXIF). If you right-click the file and go to properties, you should see the actual file dates, not the embedded date. And if you go to the Details tab, you can change the embedded dates there or “Remove Properties and Personal Information” altogether to get rid of those and make Windows rely only on the file dates.
Alternatively, in Explorer you can right-click the column headers and choose to show Date created/modified, which will use the file timestamp. The default “Date” column prioritizes the embedded EXIF date.
