pdf in Win8

I switched from WinXP to Win8 recently. Ran into this usability issue.
I read a lot of research articles and need to know when the publication dates are. Ran into reading publishing date problem in Win8. For papers not published by scientific journal, the date of publication is generally omitted by the authors and I want to know the publication date to determine the relevance of the content.

In WinXP, when I right click on any PDF file and choose properties, I can see 3 tabs: General, PDF & Summary. When click on the PDF tab , I can see the original date of creation/publication of the document on entries for Created, Modified, Accessed.

In Win8, when I right click on the PDF to bring up properties, I can see 3 tabs. General, Security & Details. In General tab, I can see the date of "created", "modified", "accessed" are the date corresponding to the date when I downloaded the document and not when the document was created by the author of the PDF. On Security tab, it also shows only the date I downloaded the document.

Can anyone please tell me how I can obtain the publication date info from PDF in Win8 please?

Thanks in advance.

sorcerer said:

In WinXP, when I right click on any PDF file and choose properties, I can see 3 tabs: General, PDF & Summary. When click on the PDF tab , I can see the original date of creation/publication of the document on entries for Created, Modified, Accessed.

Click to expand...

My hunch is that the PDF tab is not there because it's Windows XP, but rather because the XP machine had Adobe Reader installed.

Windows 8 has a built-in Reader app which will open PDFs, but it doesn't have the full functionality of Adobe Reader, and I wonder if that's the difference?

I have a Windows 8 PC on which I've installed Adobe Reader, and that has a PDF tab when I right-click and look at Properties.

I don't have research paper PDFs which would have a publication date so I've not tested that part, but my suggestion would be to install Adobe Reader on the Windows 8 PC (if you haven't already done so) and see if that helps?

Thank you. You are correct, I had not installed Adobe Reader in Win8. I thought the pre-installed PDF reader is Adobe Reader. I will try it now and let you know.
Thanks.

Hello David,
Update and correct my previous reply. Adobe Reader XI (one version earlier than what is currently available) was installed in the laptop. All PDFs were associated with Adobe Reader and not Win8's built in viewer. For sanity, I uninstalled the Adobe Reader and reinstalled the latest one. All PDFs still associated with Adobe Reader. I right click on properties and still see the problem I described in above.
I can attach screen shot of the differences of PDF's properties layout in Win8 and in WinXP if this site allows me to.
Still stuck!!

I'm assuming the previous poster either has something else installed on his machine in order to get the 'PDF' tab, or possibly he's using a 32-bit version of Windows 8? I think the 'PDF' tab isn't there on your machine because Adobe only include a 32-bit Shell Extension (not a 64-bit one as well) with Adobe Reader XI and I'm guessing you're using a 64-bit version of Windows?

As a work-a-round you can go to File > Properties in Adobe Reader and view the 'Created' date there.




Alternatively, if you browse the PDF's from inside Adobe Reader (By going to File > Open), you will then be able to right-click on the individual files and will be able to see the 'PDF' tab for them (and therefore the PDF metadata).

What you described worked. As you said all has to done within Adobe environment. Yes, the new desktop is Win7 Pro 32 bit. I guess that is the problem.
Many thanks.