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I am working with a directory of PDFs which have been scanned from actual documents in a file cabnet. When viewing a folder's contents in windows by clicking the tabs above the information users are able to logically sort files by many types of information including file name, date modified, and file type being some of the most popular.

I wish to be able to sort by the date listed on the hard copies but currently their date is from the day which they were scanned (date created or date modified) which is irrelevant here.

illustration

Is there anyay I can add another tab to the top like DateOfOriginal above and also edit that information field for each file so they can be sorted by the date which I will have to enter for each pdf? Primarily all i need to do is sort by A date which I enter

And is it also possible to do this with folders?

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If you right-click on the attribute bar, you can see more options for details to display. Even more are listed under the 'More...' selection. From there you can choose to sort based on these new headers.

I do not know of a way to add your own tab, but you can edit the MetaData of any file by Right-Clicking -> Properties -> Details tab. Some files allow you to edit this information while others do not.

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  • Yes I went down that road, I noticed that I could add more sorts. description and several of the other details concerning dates had caught my eye but as far as pdf files and folders go I have had no luck In editting their details – John Dream Dec 28 '12 at 18:01
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    I believe that most of the PDF details are inserted as part of the PDF creation process, so if you have access to a PDF editor, you could try doing it that way. – Kruug Dec 28 '12 at 18:03
  • hmmmmmm not a bad Idea ill see what I can find – John Dream Dec 28 '12 at 18:04
  • As Kruug said, PDFs may contain their own internal Created and Modified timestamps, but even if you edit them I'm not sure whether Explorer can display them or not (maybe using an iFilter...) – Karan Dec 28 '12 at 18:31
  • quite the predicament, and in my opinion its microsoft dropping the ball and not allowing easy editting for their interface but im gonna try my luck with some third party applications – John Dream Dec 28 '12 at 18:38
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I don't think there is an easy way of doing what you want. However, you could use a third-party utility like SKTimeStamp to manually set the date created to the date in the document. You could then sort by the created date.

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  • Ill give it a shot since downloading a third party program seems to be my only option. I have never heard of that program but then again I have never been faced with changing the metadata of pdf documents – John Dream Dec 28 '12 at 18:29
  • This would be the easiest and fastest method, and there are many touch utilities available, both GUI and command-line based. – Karan Dec 28 '12 at 18:32
  • Since all that I need to set is the date this should hopefully work pretty well, out of curiousity do you know if it will work for folders as well? – John Dream Dec 28 '12 at 18:39
  • Yes, it should work for both files and folders. – heavyd Dec 28 '12 at 19:42

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