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

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.

Jordan W.

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 931

2@Molly, What is user anxiety? Is there even such a term? – Pacerier – 2015-06-08T12:16:11.037

14This is yet another example of Microsoft’s The Great Dumbing-Down of Windows. Instead of pushing computer novices (what’s left of them) to learn computers and provide more advanced users with the power they desire, they keep simplifying everything for the lowest-common-denominator-celebutant-brained user and aggravating the rest of us by not even providing a power-user mode. :-| – Synetech – 2012-09-04T17:30:12.553

4"Then they changed something." i sense another case of 'user anxiety' :) – None – 2010-01-04T21:25:28.743

Answers

I found a solution at http://www.nicholasoverstreet.com/2010/03/windows-7-annoyance-file-properties/.

Go to 'Control Panel' → 'Region and Language' → 'Additional Settings' → Date tab.

Remove the string dddd (e.g. change it to ddd) click 'Apply' and it should work fine.

Explanation:

'Rightclick file properties' uses the value "Long Date" + empty_space + "Long Time". Long date is 'dddd, d MMMM yyyy' by default, and 'Long Time' is h:mm:ss tt. However, it looks like as long as you have the string dddd in 'Long Date', it may sometimes ignore your 'Long Time' settings, overriding it with "x minutes ago".

Andrew

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 626

2However, this only works if we right click the file and select properties. This still doesn't fix the problem that Windows Explorer is not showing the Long Time but the Short Time. – Pacerier – 2015-06-08T13:12:18.590

I always set both time formats to HH:mm:ss . – Jamie Hanrahan – 2017-04-10T01:18:47.503

1Thank you greatly. But is there a way to add seconds in the list view in explorer? Or even by command line with 'dir' ? (der-da-derp) – Nate – 2018-04-21T04:41:17.537

1In Windows 10, open 'Control Panel' -> 'Region' -> 'Additional Settings' -> Date tab. Change the Long Dateto "ddd, MMMM d, yyyy". Now go back to a file's properties tab in Windows Explorer and it shows the seconds. – Ryan Shillington – 2018-05-03T12:32:09.303

great!! It works thanks!! – Tomas – 2019-06-18T09:46:50.190

3Nice find! Inconvenient, but at least it’s something. I just figure that this is a bug as opposed to a feature and may be “fixed” in the future. – Synetech – 2012-09-04T17:27:42.753

I've been looking at the same problem and as far as I can tell, no there isn't a way.

However, I've been using a workaround that has satisified what I needed it for so hopefully it will help you. The following command, when run from a command line in the directory in question, will print out the file names and the modified date down to seconds:

forfiles /c "cmd /c echo @file @ftime"

I hope that might be of some use to people.

dlanod

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 454

I am in an enterprise network and cannot install any software without a good reason why it would benefit everyone else in the network. I was surprised I could open cmd, though. For users without admin rights and who only need to see the file time stamp with seconds, this is the quickest solution. – thymaro – 2019-07-22T08:48:41.047

It's important to note that Windows does show seconds. The hiding of seconds only happens in the main Explorer window:

But Andrew wasn't asking about the main Explorer window, he was asking about the the Right-click -> Properties dialog, which does show seconds:

If it works on Properties, why not in the main window?

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::

alt text

with any seconds (ss)¹ stripped out.

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.}

Edit: If you want to see the time a file was modified (down to the second), then use the Windows GUI. It shows you the time a file was modified (down to the second):

enter image description here

If you don't want to use the Windows GUI to see the time a file was modified (down to the second), then don't use it.

Edit 3/26/2015: The Windows UI will always show the modified time down to the second - even if the file has been modified very recently:

enter image description here

Edit 1/28/2016: Included Windows 10 screenshot to show that Windows 10, like Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, do show seconds.

Ian Boyd

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 18 244

5@Ian, "99% of users don't care about resolution up to seconds"? Where did you get that statistics from? This thread already has 24k views. – Pacerier – 2014-11-22T15:36:44.633

3Microsoft made it (very) slightly better for users who don't care about seconds, but much worse for users who care. I'm glad there is a solution (the dddd => ddd trick) – netvope – 2015-03-05T08:37:47.170

@Pacerier 24,000 / 300,000,000 = 0.008%. – Ian Boyd – 2015-03-05T15:11:23.953

@IanBoyd, That's assuming everyone who wanted that feature actually ended up on this thread. Nope. – Pacerier – 2015-03-08T14:02:51.397

4The windows GUI does NOT always show time to the second. If the modified date is very recent, it will show, for example, "Today, March 26, 2015, 10 minutes ago". – Ross Presser – 2015-03-26T14:08:02.277

@RossPresser, I second that. You must remove dddd as stated by the post above. If you do not: The dates will not show the "x minutes ago" if x is 0, But once x is no longer 0, they show it: http://i.stack.imgur.com/CQp4M.png Tested on Win 8.1 NTFS.

– Pacerier – 2015-06-08T13:29:26.913

I think this explanation only applies to Windows 7. In Windows 8 and above, the time is completely relative and fuzzy ("8 hours ago"). GetTimeFormatEx() does not return such a string. The "solution" remains the same, and quite usable. However, it's more of a workaround because 'ddd' is a short format day name, so you have to sacrifice the time format to get absolute timestamps back. I wish Microsoft would implement an option in Explorer itself. – djs – 2016-01-27T23:58:06.387

1@djs Updated answer with screenshot from Windows 10 showing that file properties does show seconds. – Ian Boyd – 2016-01-28T14:58:29.203

@djs - What you said confuses me. [I don't know what you mean by "sacrifice the time format".] So to clarify, on Windows 10, "Change date & time formats", if you pick a Long Date that does not have "dddd, " in front, then it will completely eliminate the "Today", etc. stuff. You'll see the full Long Date and Long time. – ToolmakerSteve – 2018-03-04T20:34:24.077

@Pacerier Hmm, lets see the numbers. According to http://www.worldometers.info/computers/ , there are over one billion pcs in use worldwide [including non-Windows]. There are about 20 million programmers, so if every programmer hates this limitation, that's 20/1000 = 2 percent of users. Not every programmer uses Windows, and not every programmer cares about this topic, so 99% is about right - unless there is evidence that a substantial number of non-programmers also pay attention to file times in seconds. :)

– ToolmakerSteve – 2018-03-04T20:42:59.297

6Unfortunately this is correct. Even adding ss to it does not make the seconds show in Explorer, the command-line, the tray-clock, etc. It’s as though they said, *Hey, we made it easy for you to customize things the way you like, but only so long as they conform to the way we like*. >:-( – Synetech – 2012-09-04T17:03:14.337

You can view the file creation/modification time quickly in PowerShell:

PS C:\Users\mskfisher> $file = C:\windows\notepad.exe
PS C:\Users\mskfisher> $file = Get-Item C:\windows\notepad.exe
PS C:\Users\mskfisher> $file.CreationTime

Monday, July 13, 2009 6:56:36 PM


PS C:\Users\mskfisher> $file.LastAccessTime

Monday, July 13, 2009 6:56:36 PM


PS C:\Users\mskfisher> $file.LastWriteTime

Monday, July 13, 2009 8:39:25 PM

Inspired by a TechNet blog post using PowerShell for some other crazy tricks.

mskfisher

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 942

Thanks for the tip. It’s a shame that we have to go to such lengths for something so simple. Even the command-prompt refuses to show it. :-| – Synetech – 2012-09-04T17:04:14.617

According to Microsoft Answers: (Archived, Jan. 2010)

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.

Darren Hall

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 6 354

4So the developers are unilaterally making UI-design decisions? This is exactly the sort of thing that gives a company a bad name. – Synetech – 2012-09-04T17:05:28.560

Explorer++ shows seconds. I used that for this problem.

https://explorerplusplus.com/download

Dean

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 1

If you want a free Windows Explorer add-on to display created, modified, access times with seconds, try stexbar. It adds a tab to a file's properties that allows changing the created, modified, access times and it displays the current times with seconds.

See here for more information.

jxf011

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 1

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.

Scott McClenning

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 3 519

-1

You can change the default "Short time format" by going to:

Region & Language -> Additional Settings -> Time Tab -> Short time

Simply set this value to: h:mm:ss tt and you'll have seconds shown on file properties now.

Paul

Posted 2010-01-04T21:08:06.547

Reputation: 99

Wrong. Have you not read Ian's answer above? The file properties is affected by the Long Time not the Short Time. And as for winexplorer, even if you set the Short Time to h:mm:ss tt, it would still ignore the seconds because the flag is used to remove the seconds: GetTimeFormatEx(..., TIME_NOSECONDS, ...);

– Pacerier – 2015-06-08T13:09:28.870