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Possible Duplicate:
How to modify timestamp in a dll or exe?
Windows equivalent of the Linux command 'touch'?

How can I set the timestamp for a file via the command-line to a specific date?

My specific situation is Windows 7.

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Joseph Hansen
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    You should probably clarify your question and state that you want to choose the new timestamp. The two current answers assume you are looking for a Windows port of the Unix command `touch` that sets a files's timestamp to the current time. – William Jackson Jun 03 '11 at 20:44
  • I've looked through Sysinternals, and I'm pretty sure they don't have a utility for this. You should try the programs linked to from http://superuser.com/questions/135901/how-to-modify-timestamp-in-a-dll-or-exe – William Jackson Jun 03 '11 at 20:50
  • @William Jackson Changed, thanks for that. Also, if it truly was a port of the Unix command `touch`, I could specify the date. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_(Unix). Something is wrong with the auto linking though, make sure you get both parentheses. – Joseph Hansen Jun 03 '11 at 20:50
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    I ... can't believe I never bothered to read `man touch`. You have taught me something new. – William Jackson Jun 03 '11 at 20:56
  • Duplicate of [Windows equivalent of the Linux command 'touch'?](http://superuser.com/questions/10426/windows-equivalent-of-the-linux-command-touch) – Scott - Слава Україні Nov 29 '15 at 01:37

5 Answers5

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Due to William Jackson's answer, I found a similar question on Stack Overflow.

The accepted answer states to use Powershell and these commands:

$(Get-Item ).creationtime=$(Get-Date "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm am/pm")
$(Get-Item ).lastaccesstime=$(Get-Date "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm am/pm")
$(Get-Item ).lastwritetime=$(Get-Date "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm am/pm")

Edit

Two examples:

(This one is from the comments:) Set the last-access time for a file aaa.csv to the current time:

$(Get-Item aaa.csv).lastwritetime=$(Get-Date)

Set the creation time of a file foo.txt to November 24, 2015, at 6:00am:

$(Get-Item foo.txt).creationtime=$(Get-Date "11/24/2015 06:00 am")
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Joseph Hansen
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    A slight variation that is recursive and a little shorter, though less readable: "gci -rec | %{ $_.lastWriteTime = ($_.lastAccessTime = ($_.creationTime = (get-date "2011-09-14T07:10:00"))) }" – codybartfast Sep 14 '11 at 06:36
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    For people that don't know much about Powershell, you have to put the filename after Get-Item. You can also omit the string after Get-Date to set the attribute to the current date/time like the default behavior of the touch command. Finally you can pass that code as an argument to the powershell command to have it just execute that from an existing batch file. Example: `powershell $(Get-Item aaa.csv).lastwritetime=$(Get-Date)` – sjbotha Sep 04 '13 at 14:03
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    What if I want to do this for every file in a directory? – CodyBugstein Jul 26 '16 at 01:25
  • Search for "Powershell every file". You might find questions like these: http://stackoverflow.com/q/16804265/756329 and http://stackoverflow.com/q/181036/756329 – Joseph Hansen Jul 26 '16 at 14:03
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    The date and time format is not as per the command, but the system wide one (so, in my system, it was dd/mm/yyy). – Martin Argerami Dec 05 '17 at 01:31
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    For every file in directory : `Get-ChildItem -File | foreach { $_.CreationTime=$(Get-Date) }` – Matthieu Rouget Dec 27 '20 at 18:24
  • How do you set creation time of one file to creation time of another file? How do you do it in a batch? – InfiniteLoop Jun 11 '22 at 21:27
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See the answers to this question.

Specifically, this can be done natively with:

copy /b filename.ext +,,

This will set the timestamp to the current time.

Documentation for the copy command is on TechNet.

The commas indicate the omission of the Destination parameter.

Uwe Keim
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William Jackson
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    Can you explain how that is working? What is the `+,,`? How do I know what date it is being set to? – Joseph Hansen Jun 03 '11 at 20:05
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    @josmh Check the documentation link for details. The timestamp gets set to the current time when you run the command. Are you implying that you want to be able to change the timestamp to an arbritary time of your choosing? – William Jackson Jun 03 '11 at 20:10
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    I'm not seeing how that helps me choose a new date for the file? – Joseph Hansen Jun 03 '11 at 20:42
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    Main problem with this is when the file is not in current directory... it will copy the file to current directory instead of "touching" it in place. – Kasey Speakman Aug 09 '17 at 19:12
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    @KaseySpeakman - this command relies on being in the current directory. Use `pushd FILEDIR`, before the comand and `popd` after – Tydaeus Jun 25 '18 at 18:32
  • @JosephHansen This works by copying the file over itself, resulting in the file counting as having been modified "now" – Tydaeus Jun 25 '18 at 18:32
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    FYI, "optimizations" in Vista+ means that, depending on context, the timestamp may not get updated as expected. It appears to work fine if this is the only command you run, but if your script does more, the timestamp may be left untouched. – Tydaeus Jun 25 '18 at 18:34
  • Exactly what I needed for a quick file change. In my case, had new files to add, wanted to use originals as template. Copied modified files to another folder, added and overwrote to the current folder, then used this command to update all the dates on the file copies I had saved out. Now I'll know which I edited and which I hadn't. – Will Belden Apr 29 '22 at 18:24
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Nirsoft to the rescue: try the freeware tool nircmd. It's a bunch of useful tools in one small command line program. One of the commands allows you to specify either or both of created time and modified time, like this:

nircmd.exe setfiletime "c:\temp\myfile.txt" "24-06-2003 17:57:11" "22-11-2005 10:21:56"

boot13
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    Also if you want to transfer time from a file to another, clonefiletime filefrom fileto works best! – JasonXA Jun 26 '15 at 19:42
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    Non-commandline, but more convenient for bulk editing: [BulkFileChanger](https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/bulk_file_changer.html) by Nirsoft – SaAtomic Dec 04 '17 at 12:50
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Using Cygwin, to set the timestamp of test.txt to January 31, 2000, at 00:01.00:

touch -t 200001310001.00 test.txt
Joseph Hansen
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Check out the following webpage: http://www.stevemiller.net/apps/

The Win32 Console Toolbox contains a utility called 'touch' that lets you modify the times on one or more files. I believe it only works with US format times, though.

Justin Pearce
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