Suppose you want to restore your files from a backup set that you created many years ago. All the files restored from this old backup would have old file modified dates. However the folder in which these files are stored would have a much newer date. This may not be desirable for some special applications which require the parent folder to have the same date as the files inside it. Besides some people do not consider it a full restoration if the folders get the same dates as the contents of those folders as well.
If you are trying to change the dates of many folders and their contents, then you can use a free utility called FolderTimeUpdate. This tool is designed to quickly change the modified date and time for all the contents inside a base folder. It scans the base folder and changes the modified date for all files and folders inside it as per the latest date of its contents.
In the FolderTimeUpdate, you have to choose a base folder. This is the folder the contents of which need a date update. You can choose how deep in the sub-folders, the program is going to search. It can be configured to change the date using the modified date of the files inside the base folders or that inside all the sub-folders. In addition to changing the modified date, we can also change the created data of the files.
When we change the modified date of the files inside a base folder, it generates a log of all the events. We can export the contents of this report to an HTML file. For the convenience of use, we can also add FolderTimeUpdate to the context-menu of folder backgrounds. This way when you right-click on an empty space inside a folder, you will see FolderTimeUpdate in the context-menu.
You can download FolderTimeUpdate from https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/folder_time_update.html.