wolfgang ziegler


„make stuff and blog about it“

Show Exact File Time Properties in Windows

January 28, 2016

Since Windows 7 (or Vista?), the File Properties dialog can be rather vague about a file’s creation, modification and access times.

Created: Today, January 28th 2016, 35 minutes ago

details minutes ago

While this representation of file creation, modification and access times might be useful for non-technical users, it’s really annoying if you want to check the exact values here.

There is no dedicated switch or setting (at least that I am aware of) for turning this behavior on or off, but there is a decent workaround for it.

  • Open Control Panel.
  • Find the Clock, Language and Region settings.
    control panel
  • Select Change date, time or number formats.
  • Your long date settings will look something like this (your mileage may vary though, due to different locale settings).
    region settings
  • Change it to an abbreviated format like “d.MMMM yyyy”. Again: your mileage may vary here. Try different settings until you find one that works for you.
    region settings2


Much better! Right?

details useful