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Re: Date Modified

How do I stop the date from being modified?

Angel336
New member | Level 2
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How do I stop the date modified from changing when I just open a file? No files have been saved or updated and the date changes to the current date. This creates a problem for tracking reasons.

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Walter
Dropbox Staff
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Best thing that comes in mind at the moment would be to quit the desktop app when accessing your files and re-launching it after you have viewed them @Angel336. Alternatively, you should be able to achieve this by looking at them via the website since you won't be editing them in any way. 

I hope this helps to some extent and let me know if you need anything else.


Walter
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support


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View solution in original post

6 Replies 6

Walter
Dropbox Staff
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Hey there @Angel336 - sorry to hear about this. I'll try to help!

From what I understand you're opening your Dropbox files locally on your computer (while using our desktop app) - just to view them and this alters the timestamp of the last modification's exact date and time when you view them online (on our website) and/or within your computer's Dropbox Folder. 

Please let me know if I understood correctly and provide any other piece of information (or even screenshots) you think might help our investigation on this matter. 

Some additional notes on this:

A. If the date modified time appears to not match the time you would expect based on your timezone can you please perform the following steps: 

  1. Confirm that ‘Automatically detect timezone’ is checked on your account's settings page.
  2. Confirm that the timezone of your computer is set correctly too.

 If both are set correctly please provide the following information: 

  1. A screenshot of your computer’s timezone setting.
  2. The timezone you expect your files to be displayed in. For example PT is Pacific Time.

Thanks!


Walter
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support


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Angel336
New member | Level 2
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Hi Walter. The original date of the folder was 6/7/2010. I opened the folder and when I exited, the date modified was changed to 10/12/2018. Nothing was modified. I hadn't even opened any of the documents in the folder. This has happened before when opening documents and closing without making any changes or resaving and the date changes.

Any way to turn off this feature?

Thanks.

 

Walter
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution

Best thing that comes in mind at the moment would be to quit the desktop app when accessing your files and re-launching it after you have viewed them @Angel336. Alternatively, you should be able to achieve this by looking at them via the website since you won't be editing them in any way. 

I hope this helps to some extent and let me know if you need anything else.


Walter
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support


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Dan S.26
New member | Level 2
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I've got this bug, and it's a serious problem.  It happens irregularly - sorry! - when using Excel or Word to view files (Win 7 Pro x64 with O365 x86). 

If you want File Explorer in one window, while opening & editing & closing Office files (without saving them) you'll see that Office has some unintuitive ways of handling work in progress.

But Walter, do I correctly understand your reply to be an acknowledgement that, yes, this is a known bug?  Or are you telling @Angel336 how to address a bug that you don't actually believe to exist?

Certainly workarounds to bugs introduced by Dropbox would include not running Dropbox (but thanks for the suggestion, Walter).  But questions remain:

* Is this a known bug? 
It's known to Walter, sure.  But if we assume Dropbox to have grown-up-style bug tracking, is this in the system as a confirmed bug?

* Is this being worked on? Does the bug have an appropriately-high priority?
For those few of us who use Dropbox collaboratively, or who use it for actually-important working documents, there is SIGNIFICANCE to a file's modified date getting changed.  ("Who messed with the 2015 reconciliation?!?")

Dan S.26
New member | Level 2
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Ah! I see that it's been understood for at least a couple years that dropbox misinterprets any change of file dates, such that it effectively over-rides the touch command.

So when Office changes a file's date back to the past, Dropbox says "Oh! There was a change! Let's make the modified date equal to right now."

It'll be wrong on the website, and on computers other than the one that actually touched the file.

And, weirdly, Dropbox won't fix this obvious bug.

Walter
Dropbox Staff
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Thanks for the additional info on this one Dan - would it be OK if I reached out to you via email to your Dropbox associated address so we can have a better look into this and with all of my tools available?

In that way, I'll be able to escalate your request as a question to an expert of my team and see if it's really expected and what can be done to avoid it.  

Let me know here and we'll take it from there.

 


Walter
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support


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