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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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
As a follow up, I just uninstalled Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB5039212) and this behavior stopped! Files I copy from my server shared folder to my computer hard drive now do NOT change the "Date Modified" attribute on the file in windows explorer on the copied file on my hard drive. I am keeping this update OFF my computer until Microsoft fixes this.
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Clarification needed.
The Date Modified for files should never change due to moving or copying. If it is changing for you, please provide details of the scenario with screenshots.
The Date Modified of a folder will always change to reflect the date of the copy or any change within the main level of the folder.
Date Created does not mean the Date you created the content. It means the date the file was first created on a given volume. People are always wanting it to mean the date the content was created, but that's not what that property is meant to represent. It's important that it continue to work as it always has for forensic and backward compatibility purposes. Of course, software, such as the aforementioned RoboCopy, can subvert its intended purpose by "preserving" the Date Created when copying files from one volume to another.
Many file types have specific metadata fields to represent when the content was created. For JPG images, there's the "Date Taken" property and for Microsoft Office files there's the "Content Created" property. It's best to use one of those properties whenever possible, rather than relying on Date Created.
This happened because MS added the following feature to file explorer :
"Starting in this update, File Explorer adds the Mark of the Web (MoTW) tag to files and folders that come from untrusted locations. When MapUrlToZone classifies a file as “Internet,” that file also gets this tag. Because of this change, the “LastWriteTime” time stamp is updated. This might affect some scenarios that rely on file copy operations."
and strange some trusted files are tagged with Zone3 as untrusted --> "Internet"
you could solve it with the below workaround :
open to the following local policy
Computurer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Componenets -> File Explorer :
and enable the policy called "Do Not Apply The MArk of The Web tag to files copied from isecure sources"
and run -> gpupdate /force
then sign out and signing back again
"Date Modified" changes on copy from server to local hard drive - Microsoft Community
- a workaround is
control panel, internet options, security tab, intranet zone, sites, detailed settings
add the server name or ip address
In my win11, I visit a network share on windows server（smb server）. Whether copying files from smb server to local machine, or copying or moving files directly on smb server, the timestamps change. I think this is a problem after win11 was updated with the May patch, because I don't have this problem on a window11 machine that hasn't been turned on since May.
The modified date for files copied from a network share update to the time of copying.
I don't have this issue when copying files from my NAS. What type of network share do you have? Is that a folder shared from another Windows 11 PC or something else? I recommend posting a report via the Feedback Hub with all the details necessary to recreate the issue.
