Forum Discussion
OneDrive date modified without changing the file
- This is because of AutoSave in the office clients. They continually save as your view them and they will make changes unfortunately sometimes by just looking at them. The only option you really have is to uncheck the option in your OneDrive client so the files don't open directly with office but open locally. It's sort of explained in this article, but this tick box should keep the files opening the old way and not using the auto save functionality.
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-office-applications-to-sync-office-files-that-i-open-8a409b0c-ebe1-4bfa-a08e-998389a9d823?ui=en-US&rs=en-001&ad=US
I have no solution yet, but I have something that may help narrow it down. For me, it's only happening to files in OneDrive Folders that are shared with me (owned by another account).
It doesn't happen to local files (not synced to OneDrive) and it doesn't happen to files in my own OneDrive folders.
Maybe for this specific situation, the file needs to be autosaved to keep it in sync with the other account that owns the folder.
That's an interesting observation. I wonder if somehow my files are considered to be not from my account. They are my files, but they are files that I created before I created my Microsoft 365 account, when I was using Office 2017 and earlier. I wonder how I would fix that without losing the last edit date for all of them.
- While many of these files are in folders that are shared with me from another accounts, I am the one who created the files and saved them there. In my case, I probably created them using the desktop version of office 2017 or office 2021. I now also have a Microsoft 365 account but I'm still using the desktop version on my main PC.
It's interesting that it seems to only be happening with Word files though I'm experiencing other strangeness with xlsx files where immediately upon opening them, they ask me to save them with the message, "This file has been moved. We recommend saving it now to finish moving it" (the file has never been moved).
I need to verify if this is happening with all files shared by other accounts or just one of the accounts that shared files/folders with me.
It makes it hard to manage files when you can't search by the modified date and know that was the last time it was modified (and not just opened). This would make things impossible for forensic analysis in legal cases as well. For example, "It shows here the Will for the estate was updated days before his death, yet the document was signed 3 years ago". Maybe not the best example but it could create lots of legal challenges. Maybe a better one would be, someone finds an unsigned will and looks on the computer to open it and the date changes from 3 years ago to today, weeks after the death of the writer. How can the document be trusted?- I too believe that Microsoft have become too cavalier with dates on files. Dates are an essential part of the data set, and I consider that when read-only was intended and actioned, then having the system changing the modified date is a corruption of essential data. There should be a separate accessed date, perhaps, with defined actions that trigger its change, and modified date should strictly not change if the content is not modified. I find myself saying 'should' a lot these days.
