I have noticed that when I copy a Word document attached to an e-mail, or
when I copy to another computer on my home network, I lose the date of origin
of the document, and the document in the new destination takes on the current
date. That is bad news, for I often have to sort files by date. This glitch
can show a 5 year old document with yesterdays' date. What's going on here?
I don't ever recall this problem before, and I've been running Windows for
many years. I'm running Windows XP Home. I'm very experienced with
computers, and Windows, so I don't think I'm making some bonehead mistake.
Thanks for any help.

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 13:59:02 -0800 from phillyjoe
<phillyjoe@discussions.microsoft.com>:
> I have noticed that when I copy a Word document attached to an e-mail, or
> when I copy to another computer on my home network, I lose the date of origin
> of the document, and the document in the new destination takes on the current
> date. That is bad news, for I often have to sort files by date. This glitch
> can show a 5 year old document with yesterdays' date. What's going on here?
> I don't ever recall this problem before, and I've been running Windows for
> many years. I'm running Windows XP Home. I'm very experienced with
> computers, and Windows, so I don't think I'm making some bonehead mistake.

If you pack a document into a ZIP file and mail the ZIP file, when
the recipient unzips it the document still has its original date. But
when you attach a document directly to mail and the recipient saves
the attachment as a file, a new file is being created.

There might be a mail program out there that (a) saves the document
date when the document is attached to an outgoing message and (b)
sets it when the incoming document is saved to a file, but I don't
know of one, and in any event that would be effective only if sender
and recipient used the same program.

Bottom line, I can't be certain but I think the odds are that
documents saved from mail (not transmitted in ZIP files) have always
taken on the date of saving as their date.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/

"Stan Brown" wrote:

> Thu, 15 Dec 2005 13:59:02 -0800 from phillyjoe
> <phillyjoe@discussions.microsoft.com>:
> > I have noticed that when I copy a Word document attached to an e-mail, or
> > when I copy to another computer on my home network, I lose the date of origin
> > of the document, and the document in the new destination takes on the current
> > date. That is bad news, for I often have to sort files by date. This glitch
> > can show a 5 year old document with yesterdays' date. What's going on here?
> > I don't ever recall this problem before, and I've been running Windows for
> > many years. I'm running Windows XP Home. I'm very experienced with
> > computers, and Windows, so I don't think I'm making some bonehead mistake.
>
> If you pack a document into a ZIP file and mail the ZIP file, when
> the recipient unzips it the document still has its original date. But
> when you attach a document directly to mail and the recipient saves
> the attachment as a file, a new file is being created.
>
> There might be a mail program out there that (a) saves the document
> date when the document is attached to an outgoing message and (b)
> sets it when the incoming document is saved to a file, but I don't
> know of one, and in any event that would be effective only if sender
> and recipient used the same program.
>
> Bottom line, I can't be certain but I think the odds are that
> documents saved from mail (not transmitted in ZIP files) have always
> taken on the date of saving as their date.
>
> --
> Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
> http://OakRoadSystems.com/
> "If there's one thing I know, it's men. I ought to: it's
> been my life work." -- Marie Dressler, in /Dinner at Eight/
>
Thank you. I suspected that was the case on e-mails. I need to download
them right away. BUT, I've noted the same thing when copying files across to
the other computer on my home network. I truly don't understand why two
systems running XP Home would change dates of origin during a copy process.
Does "copy" count as a change in Word's thinking? Seems like it does.
Still, thanks for replying.