‘ This problem stated above is quite unusual but has happened with with one of my office colleague when I have mailed some SQL Alter Scripts in a file called alter.txt, and she modified and saved it but does not remember where she has saved the file” Windows will give a time stamp for accessing the file even when you just opened it, read it, and closed it back again.You may have encountered a situation when you modify a email attachment file which comes as an email attachment from someone, after making all the modifications to the file you have closed that file editor program.īut after some time, you are not able to locate the modified file because you have opened it directly from email message on Outlook. Only when you make a modification inside it does it record a time stamp.ĭate Accessed: This is the date and time when the file was last opened. Note that if you rename the file or open it, it will not change the time stamp. This value cannot be changed without the help of a third party application.ĭate Modified: Whenever you modify anything in the file (document, presentation, etc.), Windows records a time stamp. Time stamps on Windows are divided into three areas.ĭate created: It shows the time and date when the file was first created, meaning first saved by the user. The importance of time stamps is heightened when you need to look for files based on them. Its simplification is performed by Windows System Call, wherein information like seconds, minutes, hour, day, month, and year is extracted and presented in an easy-to-understand way. Windows saves time stamps in a machine language which would be difficult for the users to interpret.

Windows records a time stamp in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) format which prevents it from being affected by shift in time zone as well as Daylight Savings Time (DST). Time stamps are records of the time when files were created, accessed, and modified. The following will show you how you can search for files this way.įile Time Stamps: What are they and why are they so important?

Find files by date modified windows 8