How to Tell the Date a Word Document Was Made

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Microsoft Word is a word processor used for the creation of everything from simple letters to complex book manuscripts and other document types. When you create a Word file, Word stores not only the date the file was created, but the most recent time the file was accessed as well as other information. Although some of this information cannot be edited, users can access and read all of the document data and even change some of the information fields.

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Step 1

Browse to the location of the Word document for which you want to check the creation date. Point to the Word document and right-click on it.

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Step 2

Choose the "Properties" option from the pop-up menu. It will be the last option available on the menu. A dialogue box will pop up. This box gives you a creation date, a modified date and an accessed date. The creation date here is not the actual creation date of the content of the document, just the creation date of the last revision of the document. This date may differ from the actual content creation date if the file existed in an earlier file. The modified date is the last date you made changes to the file. The accessed date is the date you opened the file. It will typically be the same as the modified date.

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Step 3

Click the "Details" tab at the top of the dialogue box. This tab gives you a variety of information about the document, including how many times the document has been revised, the name of the author who did the revisions and a content-created date. This is the actual date the content of the document was created. You can find the exact time the document was created here as well.

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