Help docs say that synchronizing files in DT Pro will update indexed files that have been modified in their original forms. Seems reasonable.
However I peformed a recent synchronization for a particular group in my main database, and DT Pro changed its internal modification dates for files that I know have not been altered in any way. Is this normal behavior? I never noticed that DT Pro always changes modification date.
I’d prefer that modification dates not be changed in a DT Pro database when those files have not in fact been modified. Just want to better understand the process.
If the external modification date (the one of the file) is newer than the internal modification date, then (and only then) the file should be updated and the internal modification date is set to the current date.
Thanks for the reply. Your explanation makes sense and is what I thought to be the case. In this instance, however, I have files, for example with modifications dates in the past, but their internal modification date was changed to today.
I just noticed there may be something wrong with the date information on all my files in this particular folder, as I see they have creation dates of April 1, 1976… Bug? Virus?
I visit many online journal sites where the back issues were put online in a large group sometime in the 1990s. Thus all of the files have the same creation date, which has nothing to do with the journal date. I visit other sites where all files, even those created recently, carry a random date that looks like the default in someone’s date stamper program: the people posting content don’t bother to fill in the date field, and the software isn’t doing it automatically. And in my own case, when I transferred my mailboxes from Outlook to Apple Mail last year, they all got reset to the date of the transfer. (Seriously annoying, that.)
Especially when data is transferred between formats or between computers, lots of things can happen to mess up the date. Caveat researcher.
This is intentional as that’s the date when the internal content was modified for the last time. In addition, this ensures that the last modified items are located at the top of the Tools > History panel.