Help needed re document properties and tracing edits of the contents

Question

Hi there,
We are in a situation where we believe a document may have been edited unethically and need to find out what the terminology means.
The original document exists in print and we have been sent a 'copy'  of the same document via email several months later.
The date created and modified, however, is very recent.
We know the document has been altered as it is different to the original and are trying to find out when exactly it was modified.
It is an acrobat document created on a Mac. In the document properties box it says 'Application: Word' so I guess that means that they created it in Word and saved it as an Acrobat file?
It says the date created is 05/06/14 and the date modified is 05/06/14.
Does this mean that the file's content has been changed or does it just mean that it has been saved etc?
Any help very gratefully received!

Answer 1

You can't really say anything. Files don't start out as PDFs, they start out as something else like a Word document.
So, if you have the Word document, you can make a PDF any time.
Edit the Word document any time, and make another PDF.
Also, computer dates can be set by anyone any time. Dates in a PDF can be changed (though not by Acrobat, but it isn't rocket science). If you are looking into this from a legal point of view, dates on a document are worthless.
Digitally signed documents have value provided they are signed in particular ways.
Acrobat has a compare document facility, but all this will do is confirm the changes.
To be honest, it sounds more as if they send you a new copy from the Word document, when it was asked for. Someone might have changed the document in the mean time, without tracking the changes in a way you'd have wished.