Windows 7, file properties, date modified, how do you show seconds?

Question

Anyone know a way to immediately show the seconds of a file's date modified property in the GUI? So if you create a file, any file in any directory, right-click and choose Properties, the date modified (if it's recent) will say something like "dd/mm/yyy hh:mm, one minute ago" - reminder this is in Windows 7. Windows XP did it normally. Then they changed something.

If you wait a while, eventually you'll see the seconds, I'm not sure how long a while is, but this is incredibly annoying if you want to troubleshoot something that relies on the seconds of timestamps... is there a setting? registry key I can change perhaps?

I'm literally using Chrome, pasting in the path of the directory to be able to see the seconds quickly (as a workaround) but would be nice to be able to use Win7.

Answer 1

According to Microsoft Answers:

Unfortunately we don’t know why this was removed; it’s on the developers’ side of things and out of our realm of “in-the-know”.

As you specified Chrome (and Firefox) will display seconds.

I just loaded XP pro in vmware, and saw the default for XP is sans seconds. Then I checked GNU ls on both Linux and Cygwin, no seconds displayed (by default). Granted you can do ls -l --time-style=full-iso to get the granularity you need. I guess I never really thought of needing that level of detail.

Answer 2

fileTweak is a program that adds a tab in Explorer properties. It is mainly used to change the date/time, but it will display seconds. Unfortunately it isn't free.

That said, I thought there was a free add-in that basically did the same thing.

Answer 3

I just spotted it ... how annoying.

Only workaround I could find was to set the date back 1 day each time you want to see a timestamp, not something I'd want to do too often.

Matthew

PS. If you're doing this alot, you might want to pick up an alternative file management utility. You might want to check out this thread:

http://superuser.com/questions/90/replacement-for-windows-explorer

also ...

http://download.cnet.com/Xplorer2/3000-2248_4-10341377.html

Answer 4

I've struggled with this too and found no solution. I've had to abandon Windows 7 company wide because of mainly this one issue (also a few other UI disasters) - it's a feature my computers must have. As it is, to view say a "created" timestamp, it is impossible to get it accurate to better than a DAY if the file was created 2-3 days ago, without installing 3rd party file managers etc. It is possible to enable a gazillion columns in explorer, but that won't show seconds. Unacceptable.

Answer 5

The reason you don't see seconds, is that it was a usability decision to remove them (99% of users don't care about the second a file was last modified).

To accomplish this, the shell team is calling GetTimeFormatEx, using the flag asking for it to remove seconds:

GetTimeFormatEx(..., TIME_NOSECONDS, ...);

which returns the Short time format::

with any seconds (ss)¹ stripped out.

It doesn't solve your problem, but it does explain it.

¹Even though the default en-US locale does not specify ss in the Short time format; TIME_NOSECONDS will remove any ss even if there was. _{Nor would i obey that command even if you were.}

Answer 6

Had the same problem and the only tool I found was: http://www.safer-networking.org/de/filealyzer/index.html

No win7 style, but it exactly shows what win7 does not anymore: Creation, last access and last write date AND time.

Answer 7

@ian boyd: actually you can specify your own short time format. if you had just clicked on the little button "additional settings" in the lower left corner of the window that your screenshot shows, then you would have seen that you can define the long as well as the short time format completely as you wish.

as for the op's problem: i have the same one, but it doesn't affect all files. also, contrary to what "lady" implied windows 7 still shows the info. just not immediately. to circumvent this problem, i use a little tool called "AttributeMagic". usually, it's being used to change said time values, but it also shows them. this of course is only useful for single files. if you need that for a whole range of files then there are plenty of ways to steer around that prob. from using command line tools that output file lists complete with time stamps to writing your own tools with the help of easy to use scripts such as autoit and others.

@antony: i find it pretty ridiculous to abandon an operating system just for little important features like this. if you have a whole company that is affected by this, then i guess you also have a sysadmin who should be able to supply above described tools in no time. after all, this is tremendously cheaper than down grading...let alone all the wasted time...

Answer 8

Not so ridiculous. Being able to easily view a simple property like a timestamp is pretty simple stuff. XP and earlier could do it, the filesystem (NTFS) hasn't changed or removed this ability. Next we'll be actively prevented from seeing attributes like read only, or hidden/system files without having to jump through hoops with a myriad of 3rd party tools. Where does it end?

It's not the only reason of course, but a fairly big tip of the iceberg and one that tipped the decision. It is a clear example of Windows' progression from a "tool" to a "toy" OS - fair enough for a dumbed down "home" version, but not "professional". XP and 2000 both work, even 95 does.