FG

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

Fresh3 days ago
Mar 15, 2026108322 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

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.

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

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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 (e.g. change it to ) click 'Apply' and it should work fine. Explanation: 'Rightclick file properties' uses the value . Long date is 'dddd, d MMMM yyyy' by default, and 'Long Time' is . However, it looks like as long as you have the string in 'Long Date', it may sometimes ignore your 'Long Time' s…

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