When I hover on an .eml file, the Date Modified changes after a couple of seconds to the current date and time.
This happens whether or not the preview screen is on or not.
It does not happen on any other filetype, as far as I have noticed.
It only happens on my brand-new Windows 7 64-bit machine, not on the three other Windows 7 32-bit machines.
I have set 'hover to select, single click to open'.
I changed the filetype setting so that 'eml files opened in Notepad, but it made no difference.
It is a real nuisance, because I now have to look inside the file to see what the date is.
Also, the whole sync with the other computers on the network is all to blazes, because any file that I have hovered on now has to be synced, and examined carefully to see which direction the syncing should go in.
Have I set something wrongly? Is there a bug somewhere? I can't work it out at all.
Perhaps, it is a remnant of Windows Live Email. I had this same date-changing problem some time ago, and I eventually uninstalled Windows Live Email and went to The Bat!
Now I have checked again more carefully - my apologies - and the problem also occurs on an older 32-bit notebook that also has Windows Live Movie Maker installed. I did not install Windows Live Email on either computer, but Window Live Essentials may be sufficient to cause the problem.
If this is the case, then the problem is all over the Windows forums and is insoluble, apart from uninstalling Windows Live Movie Maker and going to Roxio or something.
This is weird! I just noticed the same thing in DOpus 10.0.0.4.0.4448 x64. I searched here hoping to find a reference and this topic is named perfectly.
However the dates do not change in Windows Explorer here; only in DOpus and it appears to only happen when the tool tip appears. IOW, if a mouse over and off a file quickly enough for the tool tip not to appear the Modified Date doesn’t change. Yet if I slow down so that the tool tip does appear that is when the date changes. In Windows Explorer no tool tips appear at all when hovering over a file, so the date doesn’t change. I even clicked and highlighted files in Explorer to see if that changes the Modified Date but it doesn’t.
I looked all through the User Preferences to see if I could find a setting that might affect this but none seem to address this. So this could be Windows 7 OR DOpus? Or is it definitely Windows 7? I had Windows Live installed on my last computer but this new box was born in early January. A couple of weeks ago I was directed to install Windows Live ID auto-login something or other when I set up my OneNote 2010 to sync via SkyDrive, and that apparently installed Windows Essentials. I can't find Live Mail installed anywhere but I do see a "Windows Mail" folder - actually two of them; one in C:\Program Files and another in C:\Program Files (x86). (Hmm, that's weird all by itself!)
Whatever the case, it looks like I have lost all of those dates. Naturally the Created Dates were washed when I moved the directory holding all the EML files from the old computer to this one. And there are way too many of them for me to ever manually rename them with the dates that I can rebuild: looking at ~20,000 minimum.
So I guess no one knows of a way to prevent this from occurring? I don’t use Windows Mail; it is just there because SkyDrive put it there. Obviously it resets the modified dates in DOpus because it sees the doggone tool tip as a "modification". (That seems to be a real poor coding job by Microsoft!)
Thanks for any help with this - or sympathy if beyond help!
Does seem to be a Windows issue - I just looked at several Microsoft forums where folks have been complaining since Windows 7 was first released.
And no, I am not getting tool tips in Explorer for any files. Don’t know why - it has been quite a while since I have even looked at a Windows Explorer screen! But I am not getting any tool tips in there. I can't remember ever making any settings changes to Explorer.
I just tested this in a clean Windows 7 virtual machine with nothing installed but Windows Live Mail (i.e. not even Opus installed), and it does it (and the date change is clearly visible in Explorer) - so just to confirm if there was any doubt that it's nothing to do with Opus.
If you can live without tooltips on .eml files it seems like you can stop it happening by deleting the following value from the registry:
Coincidentally, I just copied a structure from A to B and then did a synchronise (newer files) from B to A and was surprised to find that all .eml files had their dates modified to today/now. Further testing shows that this is repeatable using a default (vanilla) Opus configuration. I also tried copy/paste in Explorer and the original dates are retained. I'm using Opus 10.2.0.9 x64.
I just tried that. I also tried exiting Explorer, reopening, and navigating back to the target folder. The copied .eml files all retain their original date. If I double click on any of them to open in my default email program, the date changes, but straight copy/paste in Explorer seems to work just fine for me.
The only weird thing there is that it isn't happening for you in Explorer for copy & paste like it appears to be for most people on Windows 7.
Maybe it only happens in Explorer if you have certain columns turned on, or maybe something about your Windows setup is different to a default machine. I don't know and it doesn't seem worth speculating about as the issue is clearly in Windows itself. (If you do want to speculate about it here, feel free to use the Coffeeshop area.)
Here's what we do know:
It's definitely a bug in Microsoft's property handler.
It goes away if you disable Microsoft's property handler via the registry.
It happens in Explorer as well as Opus.
It happens in Explorer on machines which have never even had Opus installed.
It even happens in Explorer on Windows 7 and also on a vanilla, fully-up-to-date Windows 8 machine, although the symptoms differ slightly (see below).
Lots of people have complained about it to Microsoft in lots of different places.
The complaints date back to 2008, if not before.
Microsoft don't seem to care.
Those Windows 8 symptoms, for me, all on a completely vanilla (not even Opus installed) Windows 8 x64 PC:
Take any random text file. Rename it .jpg and note that the date doesn't change. Rename it .eml and note that the date does changes. Renaming a file should not change its date, and doesn't on a vanilla machine for other extensions.
Alternatively, extract a .txt and a .eml file from a zip; the .txt file will have its timestamp preserved but the .eml file will get the current timestamp. Again, there is no reason for the .eml file's timestamp to be treated differently, but it is.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with Opus and we've all wasted enough time on it already. I suggest one of:
Permission the directories the EML files are stored in so things can't modify them (if they are for archive purposes).
Try disabling the property handler via the method I provided just above, or the other method that Jon provided before that (although you might want to research the exact consequences of doing that).
Complain to Microsoft, since it's their bug and affects the entire operating system, with or without Opus (although so many people have complained for so long, and Microsoft aren't known for fixing non-security bugs in a hurry, so it's unlikely to make a difference).
Stop worrying about it and accept that Microsoft's bug is going to make the timestamps on EML files unreliable. Let's all get on with investigating things we can actually do something about.
Has Microsoft finally fixed this very long-standing bug? The Date Modified of an EML file no longer seems to change on my 64-bit Windows 10 Pro PC when hovering on it, renaming it (including changing the extension), previewing it, or opening it without editing. If this has been fixed generally, then I am shaken to the core by the speed of Microsoft's response.
I'm sure Microsoft will fix it any minute now, heh.
OK - Holding my breath...