SOLVED

OneDrive date modified without changing the file

Iron Contributor

Hi all,

 

We have windows 10 1709 with OneDrive files on demand enabled

One of my users have an issue where if he opens and closes a file the changes the date modified.

His computer is a relatively new installation and he is patched up to February's updates. OneDrive Client version is the latest. Most of his files are set to always keep, but when I added a new folder without always keep, created files and checked after a few minutes the issue persists.

 

I found several forums with the same problem and also several user voices for Microsoft talking about it.

 

Any ideas beside trying onedrive /reset?

19 Replies
best response confirmed by RahamimL (Iron Contributor)
Solution
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-8a...

@Chris Webb 

 

This happens even when Autosave is off. It doesn't happen with other file types such as MP3s and JPGs, so is quite a serious oversight by Microsoft.

Yes, Autosave on/off does not help this issue. I see this issue all over the support threads too. I am a recent convert from Dropbox, and this issue is seriously interfering with my workflow. File Open/Close has functioned one way in Microsoft Products for more than 3 decades. I am hoping this is a bug and not some new "feature."
I would like to amend my comment. It turns out that "Auto-Save" feature within Office Products is very different than the "Office Sync" settings within OneDrive. In the earlier post, user Chris Web referenced this article:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/use-office-applications-to-sync-office-files-that-i-open-8a...

If others are having the same problem I did, read it carefully ... it is not about "auto-save" but the Office Sync settings for OneDrive.

Thank you for your help, and I hope that others will find this setting works for them!

This was very helpful. The Modified Date is very important to my workflow and I can confirm this is the OneDrive feature that changes it almost every time you open a document to view it. Thank you.

 

Quick recap for posterity: go to OneDrive Settings > Office tab > under File collaboration > uncheck "Use Office applications to sync Office files that I open"

I know this is an old thread, but the problem persists. Disabling the sync is not a good solution, because that breaks all the collaboration features and live editing. Even if you don't need to collaborate with anyone, it means you have to save and close the file on one computer in order to edit it on another. This means for anyone with a laptop and a desktop computer, turning off the auto sync and autosave breaks important functionality of OneDrive.

Maybe for many, this is worth it to stop the inane Date Modified changes, but I see MS is starting to provide other options. Specifically, I notice that some files can now be set to open in Read Only mode, with a click to flip to Edit. This is an extra step for when you do want to edit the file, but as a single click for an "Enable editing" button that's right there at the top of the window, it's worth it for me to preserve the full benefits of live editing and protect the Date Modified from changing on open. Unfortunately, and this is what I'm currently seeking, I don't see how to set this as the default for all Office files, or at least per application (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Anyone know if this is possible and how?

Though an old thread, I think I've found a workaround that doesn't require turning off autosave or autosync. 

 

We know that simply opening an Office file saved in OneDrive will automatically update 'date modified'. However, it doesn't update 'date last saved'.

 

You can change the columns in File Explorer to show 'date last saved' instead of 'date modified':

 

  1. Navigate to the folder
  2. Right click on a column heading (e.g name)
  3. Select 'More...'
  4. Uncheck 'Date modified'
  5. Scroll down to 'Date last saved' and check this
  6. Click OK

 

Capture.PNG

 

For the change to apply to all folders of the same type, follow these simple steps: https://superuser.com/a/1128443/642896 

Thank you SO much! This has been driving me nuts lately and it's a very good solution that I expect will be useful in other contexts as well

In your local sync'd OneDrive files, select file, hold Shift + RightClick, Open as Read-Only.
Has worked well for me, so far, without file or folder changing modified date, so long as I only read and close the document.
Online OneDrive, I use the document menu, Preview - works as Read-Only.
These features mean that I don't have to change any headings or OneDrive settings.

 

EDIT - wanted to emphasize - when Shift + RightClick, Open as Read-Only, the file opens in Word (etc) with the AutoSave off.  This allows to safely save as a copy of the document without damaging the date of the primary document.

This has nothing to do with OneDrive .

If you have background services running in your Office documents like language autodetect, spellcheck etc etc then these will update invisible tags in your document and thus modify the document. This was true before OneDrive (or its predecessors) existed.

I have clarified why this is happening for me. I have Windows 10 Office 365 Family. I have Auto Save turned off in Word and Excel. When I open files that were created prior to my migration to One Drive, the files are automatically saved as soon as I open them, updating the Date Modified. This is really annoying and unfortunately doesn't seem to be fixable. When I open files that were created or previously saved after my One Drive migration, they are not automatically saved and the Date Modified works as desired.
Long before OneDrive came around, Office was updating the modified date on opened files because background processes such as proofing, language tagging etc are changing the document metadata.

That is not the situation.  I have been using the Modified Date heavily for version tracking for at least the last 15 years, and I often open and close files without saving them.  The Modified Date does not change unless you save the file.  Those things you are referring to only affect the Modified Date if you save the file after they happen.  You may have had AutoSave turned on without realizing it.

I've been using Word etc for 35 years, before AutoSave, before OneDrive, ...

@Mike Williams , the only field that changed on Open (i.e., w/o making actual changes to file contents) pre-OneDrive was the Accessed field, NOT the Modified field. Even renaming a file doesn't change its Modified date. This was true even before Windows and long, long before OneDrive. Modified field would ONLY change if you edited and saved the file. That's why, back then, there were both Accessed and Modified date fields, both separate from the Created field.

 

MS has made a lot of progress on this problem since they first rolled out this change with OneDrive. At least now it's pretty easy to set files not to open in an Autosave state by default. It's still not perfect and requires behavioral change by users (if there's a template document that doesn't use DOTX, then user must know to Save As immediately before making any changes, not as a final step, otherwise his/her changes have become part of the template), and WORST, if a user does change a file by accident, there is no way to undo the change to the Modified date (short of restoring from a separate back-up). Even if you use the Version Control feature of OneDrive to revert to a prior version (which is great except for how it mangles the Modified date), it still sets the Modified date to be the point at which you restored the old version, or at least it did at my last check a few months ago.

I do agree - since OneDrive, dates (preservation, accuracy, management generally) have been given short shrift by Microsoft.
This is all fine, but I can guarantee that this issue is happening for me right now. I transitioned to OneDrive three days ago. Any files that I have created or saved since the transition work as expected. The Date Modified does not get updated if I open and close them without saving. But if I open files that were last saved prior to the transition, the message in the quick-access toolbar flashes "Saving" and then "Saved" and they automatically are saved and the Date Modified is updated. I have AutoSave turned off in both Word and Excel and I also have the option deselected to "Autosave files stored in the cloud by default". My files are all set to "Always keep on this device", and I am accessing them through Windows Explorer in the local Excel and Word apps (not the browser-based versions). These are all simple files without special automatic fields such as date fields in them.

While I agree that MS did not give enough care to protecting Modified Date in OneDrive (I too use it as a form of version checking and to find recently edited files, and it's way too easy to accidentally make a change and lose the real Modified date forever), I tried and was not able to reproduce the problem you described:

I created a new Word document on a local drive (not on OneDrive). I made changes and saved it, confirmed the Modified Date reflected the time of the changes. Then I opened it a few minutes later without saving any changes and only the Accessed time stamp changed in file Properties, not Modified.

Then, I copied the file to OneDrive. Opened it in Word again by double-clicking from Explorer in the OneDrive folder. I had not turned off Autosave, so it was even set to Autosave, which will provide the most aggressive updates to the Modified value. I moved the cursor around in the Word document and made various selections, but didn't change anything. Then, I closed the file and checked the results.

The file's Created time and date showed the time I created it on OneDrive (not the original creation date), which is how all MS OS's have treated Created since the DOS days -- always reflects the time it was added to a new volume/drive. The Accessed time showed the time when I last used the file. But the Modified date still showed the time stamp of the last actual changes to the file before I moved it to OneDrive.

Good test. I tried doing the exact same thing. But after I copy the file to OneDrive, when I open the document the quick-access toolbar flashes "Saving" and then "Saved" and then the Date Modified is updated even though I don't manually choose to save the document. Then if I open it a 2nd time it doesn't get saved and Date Modified is not changed. It is just the first opening. There must be some setting in my OneDrive configuration that is causing this. I did not have this problem when my work computer was transitioned to OneDrive.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by RahamimL (Iron Contributor)
Solution
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-8a...

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