Designing an Object and the "The Definition of Table X Has Changed" error

Hi all,

First post here so sorry if this isn't the right place. Probably a silly question too, but I just want to eliminate this from my investigation.

We have a client that received the error message "The definition of Table 27 - Item has changed. Start your activity again," a fairly standard message, but when I investigated the last date/time the object was modified, it was well over a year ago. One of my colleagues has a theory that just by designing the object and looking at the code (without making or saving any changes) can be enough to cause this type of error. Is there any truth in this?

Thanks!