Noting the Workbook Creation Date

I like all of the suggestions made by Willy Vanhaelen., and I'll probably incorporate some or all into one of my existing add-ins.

In particular, I've known about the effect that copying a file has on its creation date. However, since this is true of all Windows files, I've known about it, and it's never especially bothered me. However, on the rare occasion when I need to know when a workbook first began to take shape, it's handy to know that Excel keeps that information in its own document properties.

That being the case, I'll keep my existing method of evaluating the creation date of a file, since I use it regularly with all kinds of files, including other types of Office documents, plain text files, and even program files.

As an aside, I have dozens of custom functions defined in a set of Excel add-ins that I started over a decade ago. The beauty of having them defined in add-ins is that I can use them in regular XLSX files. The down side, of course, is that I can't easily distribute those Excel documents or the add-ins to others, since I have yet to find a truly foolproof way to install add-ins on other machines _and_ re-establish links to them on others' machines.

Experimenting with the implementation of this tip's idea I became interested in knowing the creation date of some of my workbooks. I found out that the creation date returned by FileSystemObject (Windows) used in this tip's UDF is not reliable. When you copy a file, Windows shows the copy date as creation date. When you continue working with the copy you get a false creation date. So I did some more investigation and discovered that Excel keeps record of the real creation date that can be accesses through vba with BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date").

So I inserted a macro in my personal macro collection:

Sub Created()
MsgBox ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date"), , "Creation date of active file"
End Sub

Having created a button in the QAT for this macro I can find out the creation date of any open workbook in the blink of an eye, eliminating the need of any UDF associated with a formula somewhere in a worksheet.

If you prefer to use one of the macros of this tip, you can drastically simplify them by using
BuiltinDocumentProperties.

Sub Auto_Open() 'or better: Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Worksheets(1).Range("A1") = ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date")
End Sub

No need to check if A1 already has a date because it won't change.

Function CreateDate()
CreateDate = ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date")
End Function

If you enter =CreateDate() in a brand new workbook that hasn't been saved before, the current date is displayed, so there is no need for error catching.

Format the cell containing the creation date to your liking.

I don't see the use of the Auto_Open macro. It does it's job when you open the file for the first time but this doesn't necessarly correspond with the date you created it. That could be days ago.

The second macro can be usefull if you remove the bug in it. Indeed as it is presented in this tip it allways returns "Not Saved" because the argument of GetFile is ActiveWorkbook.Name. This returns the name of the workbook without the path which generates an error.

Replace it by ActiveWorkbook.FullName and then the UDF will work.

Years ago, I devised an almost identical function that can return any of the three dates associated with any file, and have used it from time to time to get the created or modified date of a workbook. My generic function is invaluable for keeping track of which of a set of files remains to be updated.

Can someone provide the definitions for the following?
Created
Modified
Accessed
While the definitions seem evident, I need to prove when a document was saved to the server. Does the Created definition provide the evidence?

Also, to answer Paul's question:

ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Last Save Time")

This is easier, as you don't need to use scripting. TO access the creation date from VBA, use the following:

ActiveWorkbook.BuiltinDocumentProperties("Creation Date")

(For Paul) I haven't confirmed this but I'm pretty sure that to retrieve when the workbook file was last SAVED the same basic macro can be used but with the Temp variable set to the 'dateLastModified' property instead of the 'dateCreated' property (oh, and the name of the macro no doubt changed to call it SaveDate or something similar).

An easier (and more informative) method

Add a worksheet to your workbook. In this version history worksheet:
col a date of editing workbook
col b version (incremental)
col c module affected
col d brief description of change

Now you have a record of your workbook's history

Interesting tip !
But ... Is there a way to put the (time and) date in a cel that tells when the sheet was SAVED the last time ?

thanks in advance !