excel is making binary changes without adjusting date&time

[king8nl]

Hello,

Excel is sometimes making binary changes without adjusting date&time. For
instance, when I open a spreadsheet, choose save as to create copy, the md5
checksum of the original is changed, without a change in date&time.This is
causing me problems when I do a binary comparison to check the quality of my
backup copies. I have seen this also in older versions of excel and in other
ms office products, but most notibly in excel.

can someone confirm this behaviour? explain it? point me to a solution?

it should be impossible to change a file without changing date&time ..!!!

thanks for any help!

Henk Koning

 

[Dave Peterson]

I haven't looked into this very closely, but I think that excel (all of the
office programs???) keeps track of last access.

If you open a file, then click on File|Properties|statistics tab (in xl2003
menus), you'll see a date accessed entry.

Maybe that's the value that's changing your checksum????