When is Microsoft going to FIX the DATE issues in File Explorer??

"the day it was actually saved/written as bits onto my hard drive"

Yes, clearly. IT WAS NOT ALWAYS THE CASE.

Once you copy a file (which has NOT even been modified) a couple of times or restore it to a new hard drive, the dates all become meaningless.

I have 10s of 1000s of files restored to my computer. All the dates have been ruined. SO FRUSTRATING.

Microsoft CHANGED what the dates shown in File Explorer mean. (With Windows 7?) It was quite noticeable. It used to actually be meaningful. And they apparently changed how it worked for their own benefit (or out of sloppiness or whatever) but not for the benefit of the user.

HOW CAN I MAKE FILE EXPLORER SHOW A USEFUL DATE FIELD? (So that I can sort on that field)

This has been particularly evident with PHOTOS. DISPLAY THE DATE IT WAS TAKEN (or photo-edited) for crying out loud.

It seems counter-intuitive, but the date-modified can be before the date-created because one refers to the file changing, and the other refers to when it was written to the disk.

If I download a file that was edited 10 years ago, that file will show a date-modified from 10 years ago, but the date-created (the day it was actually saved/written as bits onto my hard drive) was today.

Yeah, excellent idea!

I did some more experimenting with the dates by copying a (Word) file into another folder. It copies over with the original date. As soon as you make a change, all date attributes ("Created," "Modified," "Accessed"--dates in the basic properties area) change to the current date.

So the Date ("Modified": what File Explorer shows) on my file was 5/3. The file copied over with the 5/3 date. I opened the copy, made a small change, and saved it. Now ALL dates show as 7/7. "Created," "Modified," "Accessed" This is pretty pointless, no? Also, when I open the file later, "Accessed" time stamp doesn't seem to change the time.

There is an attribute in the "Details" section of the file properties called "Content Created" with the actual date I created the file. There is also a property showing when the file was Last Saved that seems correct and useful. Unfortunately, you cannot select those to show in File Explorer. (But at least I know the information is still there with each file.)

Thank you. Right, I forgot you could do that in "Details" view. At least that for the photos.

Unfortunately, for my thousands of Office files, the dates (ALL--"Created" "Modified" "Accessed") have become totally meaningless.

As I said before, at some point Microsoft changed how they handle the dates attached to files. How to get them to address it?

If you want to see the date a photo was taken (as stored inside the file itself instead of anything related to the file properties like date-created or date-modified), you can add "Date Taken" to your view.

To do that, just right-click any existing column heading, choose "More..." and then add "Date Taken" to the list.

After you do this, you'll be able to see the date the photo was taken, and this data comes from the date information embedded into the picture file, so it won't be able to change even if the date it was written to the drive changes or anything else, it's an immutable part of the file.