How do I change the file creation date of a Windows file?

Yak shaving for the win.

import pywintypes, win32file, win32condef changeFileCreationTime(fname, newtime):    wintime = pywintypes.Time(newtime)    winfile = win32file.CreateFile(        fname, win32con.GENERIC_WRITE,        win32con.FILE_SHARE_READ | win32con.FILE_SHARE_WRITE | win32con.FILE_SHARE_DELETE,        None, win32con.OPEN_EXISTING,        win32con.FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, None)    win32file.SetFileTime(winfile, wintime, None, None)    winfile.close()

I did not want to bring the whole pywin32 / win32file library solely to set the creation time of a file, so I made the win32-setctime package which does just that.

pip install win32-setctime

And then use it like that:

from win32_setctime import setctimesetctime("my_file.txt", 1561675987.509)

Basically, the function can be reduced to just a few lines without needing any dependency other that the built-in ctypes Python library:

from ctypes import windll, wintypes, byref# Arbitrary example of a file and a datefilepath = "my_file.txt"epoch = 1561675987.509# Convert Unix timestamp to Windows FileTime using some magic numbers# See documentation: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/167296timestamp = int((epoch * 10000000) + 116444736000000000)ctime = wintypes.FILETIME(timestamp & 0xFFFFFFFF, timestamp >> 32)# Call Win32 API to modify the file creation datehandle = windll.kernel32.CreateFileW(filepath, 256, 0, None, 3, 128, None)windll.kernel32.SetFileTime(handle, byref(ctime), None, None)windll.kernel32.CloseHandle(handle)

For advanced management (like error handling), see the source code of win32_setctime.py.

install pywin32 extension first https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/Build%20221/

import win32fileimport pywintypes# main logic functiondef changeFileCreateTime(path, ctime):    # path: your file path    # ctime: Unix timestamp    # open file and get the handle of file    # API: http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/win32file__CreateFile_meth.html    handle = win32file.CreateFile(        path,                          # file path        win32file.GENERIC_WRITE,       # must opened with GENERIC_WRITE access        0,        None,        win32file.OPEN_EXISTING,        0,        0    )    # create a PyTime object    # API: http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/pywintypes__Time_meth.html    PyTime = pywintypes.Time(ctime)    # reset the create time of file    # API: http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/win32file__SetFileTime_meth.html    win32file.SetFileTime(        handle,        PyTime    )# examplechangeFileCreateTime('C:/Users/percy/Desktop/1.txt',1234567789)