How To Change Excel's File Original Creation Date?

[Blazin J]

This may be an off-the-wall question, but there is a lot of expertise in this community so I thought I'd ask.

I am wondering how you can change Excel's original file creation date. You can find it by right-clicking on a speadsheet icon then going to:

File - Properties
Custom Tab
Click on Advanced
Look for a field called "Date Created"

Some dates you can edit/change, but I haven't figured out how to change this one yet. I'd like to know because I have a need to change the date on a particular spreadsheet.

 

[Tom Urtis]

OK, so did the suggestions from my last post do what you want? They did for me so I don't know where else to go with this from here.

 

[Seti]

I found this utility. It is freeware and runs from Windows so you could change the date there rather than in a macro if that would work for you. If not, please ignore this suggestion.

 

[Blazin J]

OK, so did the suggestions from my last post do what you want?

Yes, just tried it and it did work! Thanks a bunch!

 

[Tom Urtis]

Cool - - and thanks to Seti for another utility link.

 

[throtmorton]

Tom,

Thanks, I had the same problem and this worked great for me.

Paul


Sub ChangeDate()
ThisWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date") = Date
End Sub

and it changed the Statistics tab's Created date to today.

I changed the macro to this and ran it
ThisWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date") = Date - 5
and it gave a Statistics tab date of March 18, 2005, 5 days ago.

In both cases the General tab's Created date remained unchanged from the macros, which makes sense because it is a different property.

So, both dates are covered for me...the one on the General tab using Properties Plus, and the other on the Statistics tab using said macros. Does that not work for you?[/QUOTE]

 

[xenou]

After 5 years one wonders if the file still exists...

 

[pt0u70bb]

I've just copied this off of a MS Word reply but it works the same way (fanstastic resource for audit queries )

You can create a second document in a different name and with a specific creation date but has the same content as the first document.
1) Go to Date and Time Property to change the system date to the desired date (in this case, let's change the date to January 1, 1985)
2) Create a blank Word document with the desired name
3) Save the blank document and exit Word
4) Change the Date and Time back to the real date and time
5) Open the first document and copy all its content
6) Paste the content into the newly created second Word Document
7) Save and exit
Now you should have a new document that's with a creation date of 1-1-1985 but with the content of the first document.

Good luck!

 

[Googles]

After 14 years one wonders if the file still exists...