Fixing Created and/or Modified date metadata

I’m sorry if this was answered before. I did a search and only found a solution for macOS that does not work on the Windows version of Scrivener.

Is there a way to modify the Created and Modified date metadata fields for an existing file?

Many thanks in advance.

Hi.
Not really.
But you can create your own date type custom metadata field and input any date you want in there.

Otherwise, I think that date created/modified probably comes from the system itself. If you find a way and are really into giving yourself the trouble, perhaps you could change it from Windows explorer. (Although, given the fact that the files Scrivener uses are named long seemingly random numbers, and that so they are really hard to identify, I would say you’d better let it be.)

Thanks, @Vincent_Vincent , for your prompt response. I was just trying to “fix” the date of a file I created long before I began using Scrivener, but it’s not a big deal. I’ll just stick to comments or notes in the inspector.

BTW, It’s actually pretty easy to identify the file in the Windows file system using a utility like AstroGrep.

Unfortunately, Created and Modified dates don’t seem to match among NTFS and Scrivener metadata. Dunno why. :man_shrugging: It seems reasonable to expect that they would.

Thanks again!

If you create a backup of your project first, then you could try editing the .scrivx metadata directly in a text editor. Don’t do so while Scrivener is running/has that project open, but it seems the BinderItem node’s metadata would be easy to change if you’re careful to use the same date format for the Created or Modified dates.

I can’t be sure why the file system info isn’t the same, but I bet it has something to do with the fact that creating a binder item does not actually create a file on the file system; it just makes an entry in the .scrivx file. When you first add text to that binder item’s editor, and it automatically saves, then you get an OS-level file creation. Also, syncing using cloud services might mess up create/modify dates, as could any number of other OS events that are outside of Scrivener’s ability to control.

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Your .scrivx editing tip worked like a charm. Thanks, @Rdale !