I know nothing changes -- I've analyzed that ad nauseam. But why change the date? I have a system under version control (CVS) which includes MDB files, and obviously CVS reacts when the date changes. Why doesn't Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher or Visio do that? Excel, in particular, understands file-sharing, but if two people simultaneously open a workbook and make no changes, still its date doesn't change.
The only way I've found to prevent the date changing is to turn on the file's read-only attribute before opening it. Isn't there a better way?