>>>Try it yourself with any Word file.
>>
>>Ahhhh, I see! I stand CORRECTED.
>>
>>Now you've piqued my interest.
>
>I think you're actually right saying that these properties are somehow internal for the Word document even if you can set them from the Properties in WE. At least these properties are not saved with other files formats when you try to send them by e-mail.
...which altogether means this is quite unreliable. If the OS somehow extracts the properties from document files created by one software from one vendor (*), but not plain text files (and rtf is just a text file, like html or postscript - not binary), that means using file properties as a way to carry information from one place to another is just plain unreliable.
I've tried this with a dbf and with an ini file - dbf because that's what OP needed, and .ini because it was the simplest text file at hand.
So the OS extracting extra info to display about some file types - from inside those files - works sometimes. And gets preserved when the file is transported (directly or packaged in a zip, email or other container) only when the info is contained within the file and the OS at the target also recognizes the file type and is capable of knowing where the software which created the file keeps that extra info (* again).
Doesn't work for a DBF, because obviously the software which created it is not by either of the aforementioned two vendors; it must be made by a separate vendor who wasn't in on the deal ;).
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(*) which almost smacks like a collaboration between those vendors