The Unix world has long had utilities like “touch”, and DOS\/Windows console applications exist for this: to bump the file’s last modified date\/time to the current system time. In Windows 95\/98, I used shdate which added a tab on a file or folder’s property which allowed changing the time stamp. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it work well with XP.<\/p>\n
So assuming that all you want to do is change the last-modified date to the current time, for one or more files, the following script will do it for you. Just save it to a location and file name of your choice, then execute the script. That will inject a context-menu item into the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\\* called “touch”. Just select one or more files in Windows Explorer, and select “Touch” from the context menu.<\/p>\n
That’s it. Enjoy. ( touch.vbs )<\/p>\n
\r\n' Touch.vbs -- Take 1 or more files, and changes the last modified date to the current time.\r\n' John J Schultz -- Public Domain.\r\n'\r\n' Parameters\r\n' wscript \/\/NOLOGO \/\/B TouchFiles.vbs {file1} [{file3} [...]]\r\n'\r\n' ----------------------------\r\n\r\nOption Explicit\r\n\r\nDim aFiles, oShell, oFS, oFolder, oArgs, iCount, bValidParameters, sLine, dTimestamp\r\n\r\nset oShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")\r\nsLine = ""\r\non error resume next\r\nsLine = oShell.RegRead ("HKCR\\*\\shell\\Touch\\")\r\non error goto 0\r\nIf sLine = "" Then\r\n\toShell.RegWrite "HKCR\\*\\shell\\Touch\\", "Touch", "REG_SZ"\r\n\toShell.RegWrite "HKCR\\*\\shell\\Touch\\command\\", "wscript.exe """ & WScript.ScriptFullName & """ ""%1""", "REG_SZ"\r\n\tMsgBox "You can now touch any file from the context menu in Windows Explorer, by right-clicking on the file and selecting Touch", vbOKonly + vbInformation, "Shell extension installed."\r\n\tSet oShell = Nothing\r\n\tWScript.Quit (0)\r\nEnd If\r\nSet oShell = Nothing\r\n\r\nSet oArgs = WScript.Arguments\r\nbValidParameters = (oArgs.Count >= 1)\r\nIf bValidParameters Then\r\n\tFor iCount = 0 to oArgs.Count - 1\r\n\t\tIf iCount = 0 Then\r\n\t\t\tReDim aFiles (iCount)\r\n\t\tElse\r\n\t\t\tReDim Preserve aFiles (iCount)\r\n\t\tEnd If\r\n\t\taFiles (iCount) = oArgs(iCount)\r\n\tNext\r\nEnd If\r\nSet oArgs = Nothing\r\n\r\nIf Not bValidParameters Then\r\n\tWScript.Echo "Invalid parameters"\r\n\tWScript.Quit(0)\r\nEnd If\r\n\r\ndTimeStamp = Now()\r\nSet oFS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")\r\nSet oShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")\r\nFor iCount = 0 To UBound (aFiles, 1)\r\n\tIf Not oFS.FileExists (aFiles (iCount)) Then\r\n\t\tWScript.Echo "Skipping missing file: " & aFiles (iCount)\r\n\tElse\r\n\t\tSet oFolder = oShell.NameSpace(oFS.GetParentFolderName (aFiles (iCount)))\r\n\t\toFolder.Items.Item(oFS.GetFileName (aFiles (iCount))).ModifyDate = dTimeStamp\r\n\t\tSet oFolder = Nothing\r\n\tEnd If\r\nNext ' File\r\nSet oShell = Nothing\r\nSet oFS = Nothing\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Unix world has long had utilities like “touch”, and DOS\/Windows console applications exist for this: to bump the file’s last modified date\/time to the current system time. In Windows 95\/98, I used shdate which added a tab on a file or folder’s property which allowed changing the time stamp. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vbscript-intended-for-wscript-which-interfaces-with-windows-explorer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}