File explorer and date created/modified change when copying files/folders.

Anonymous
2024-02-17T14:09:45+00:00

Dear Microsoft Wizards,

I come to you with a tale of woe, a saga of time-displaced files and folders that have lost their way in the temporal vortex of Windows File Explorer. In an age where we can chat with AI, drive electric chariots, and binge-watch shows about dragons and spaceships, I find myself anchored to a mundane reality. In reality, copying files and folders in Windows File Explorer betrays their original timestamps, casting them adrift in the present, forgetting their noble past.

Imagine a world where one could copy a file or folder without the cruel hands of the present altering their date and time stamps. A world where digital artifacts remain untouched by the ravages of time, preserving their history as meticulously as a museum curator with a penchant for organization and accuracy.

"Why not use robocopy or other command prompt utilities?" I hear you ask, your voices echoing through the hallowed halls of Redmond. Ah, but here lies the rub! While these tools are mighty in their own right, they demand a saint's patience and a wizard's expertise. Delving into the command prompt is akin to stepping into an ancient crypt inscribed with arcane commands and cryptic parameters. It is a thrilling adventure for the occasional file or two, perhaps, but Herculean labor when faced with the task of preserving the timestamps of hundreds, nay, thousands of files and folders.

So, I pray that you, the noble scribes and engineers of Microsoft, bestow upon us, the humble users, a magical feature within the Windows File Explorer itself. A feature that allows us to copy our digital treasures while keeping their temporal essence intact – no spells, no incantations, and indeed no command line rituals required.

In this quest for temporal fidelity, I stand ready to champion this cause, armed with nothing but my wit and a profound desire for user-friendly file management. Together, let us forge a new path through the annals of digital file preservation, ensuring that our files and folders may travel through the vast expanse of directories without losing sight of their origins.

Yours in time-traveling solidarity,

Luis Martinez

******@outlook.com

P.S. If this feature comes to pass, future generations will look back on this moment as a turning point in history – the day we let our files journey through time, unaltered and proud, their timestamps shining like beacons of their actual age.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-06-13T12:38:07+00:00

    For me I can see the argument for the apparent original design using "created" for the first time in a volume. If so then for me their should be a logical behaviour difference between copying and moving within the same volume.

    There is. A file moved within the same volume will retain its Date created because it's not a new file (unless the "move" was done by a copy/delete). Note that dragging a file (or doing cut/paste) from one location to another, within the same volume, does not do a copy/delete; it simply updates the directory pointer for that file (which is why it's almost instantaneous regardless of file size).

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-05-29T20:36:39+00:00

    Fascinating discussion and I have come up with a bit of a work around as I work my way through capturing 650GB of images onto my home PC. The fundamental issue I have with File Explorer is the lack of capture of source timestamp into the existing field of Date Taken for Raw image files. A great number if not most photographic enthusiasts with modern mirrorless camera systems work with raw image files. Even iphones offer raw images. Date Taken is used and accessible in File Explorer for JPEG files (I haven't investigated other file formats).

    Another fundamental File Explorer behaviour that is probably related and equally frustrating is the treatment of certain fields in the sorting algorithm. By way of example try sorting a folder by date with say a few thousand 50MB images from a few cameras that have different file naming structures. Each file seems to need to be accessed to capture a value for date to progressively populate the displayed date field and after a cup of coffee it may suddenly sort the files by date. If this was a once off process I could live with it but if you close the folder next time you open it it defaults to the Name field sort (and sometimes (no idea why this doesn't always work) if you apply your selected File Explorer sort in the View Options to the folder type, it will again laboriously go through the entire process - does Microsoft own coffee plantations??

    My solution to this is a clunky throwback to DOS as once I get the mixed collection of images into the correct date order (the trigger for the original question re the clumsy date fields /mage timestamp behaviour of File Explorer) then rename them with a sequential prefix. This way the folder opens acceptably quickly in the desired order. It also seems to helps any other software application that operates on the folder files

    Regarding the perhaps philosophical discussion about the semantics of the names for the Date Created and Modified fields then a clear published explanation of their behaviour in File Explorer might help a lot of users avoid grief and frustration. For me I can see the argument for the apparent original design using "created" for the first time in a volume. If so then for me their should be a logical behaviour difference between copying and moving within the same volume.

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  3. Les Ferch 10,361 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-05-29T11:17:14+00:00

    For "Date created", that's working as designed. It is supposed to be the date the file is first created on a given volume. It's useful forensic information. It was never meant to represent the content creation date, but of course does serve that purpose for the original volume.

    You can install a third party file copy tool, that integrates with Explorer, and, by default, resets the Date created when copying files (which includes moves to another volume) to match the original date created. One such tool is TeraCopy.

    You can also achieve the same result using RoboCopy or Zip/UnZip, as you mentioned, but then you have to remember to do that.

    If your Date modified is being changed to the current date as well, that's a different issue (i.e. it's not supposed to do that). Please clarify if that happened.

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