Maintain date created on pdfs copied to a new laptop

Question

All of my pdfs were copied from old Win 10 laptop to new Win 11 HP laptop. It appears they were copied and not moved so date created is not original date. Any way to fix? I understand files should have been moved instead of copied.

Amal. · Answer

Hi there

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the late reply.

When files are copied to a new device, the "Date Created" attribute reflects the date they were copied rather than the original creation date. Since the files were copied rather than moved, the original creation dates were not preserved.

However, the "Date Modified" and "Metadata" within the PDF file may still contain useful information about the original creation date, depending on how the files were initially created and edited. You can check this by following these steps:

Using Adobe Acrobat (Reader or Pro):

Open the PDF file.
Go to Document Properties (Ctrl,Cmd+D) > Description tab.
Look for the "Created" and "Modified" timestamps.

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