OneDrive changing the dates on my photos?!?!?

Anonymous
2018-05-14T02:11:34+00:00

Hello,

I recently uploaded 45,000 of our family photos to OneDrive, the dates ranging from 1999 to 2018.  They had been previously separated in folders by year and month, so decided it was time to back them up in the cloud and take advantage of Microsoft's photo features through OneDrive.  After uploading all of my photos, I was shocked to see that many of my photos were reorganized.  Randomly, photos from 2002, 2005, 2009, 2014, and 2016 were shown as brand new photos with a current date stamp.  I found that there were literally hundreds of photos that were RE-DATED to the the date that I uploaded the photos.  Somehow, OneDrive physically changed the metadata on the Date Modified and Date Taken to reflect the date that I uploaded the photos, not the date that they were originally taken.  Even worse, the uploaded picture permanently changed the date on my local pictures, so now these photos are irreversibly corrupted and I cannot organize them by date anymore.

Microsoft, this is a massively humongous bug in the OneDrive system that I found, by searching, has been questioned several times before.  Whenever I look at those posts, the commenting has been locked so that nobody can comment anymore.  Not sure why Microsoft wants this issue hushed by the community, but this problem will not just go away.  It needs to be fixed as soon as possible!!  We have thousands of photos that are unknowingly being corrupted, most people probably just haven't figured it out yet.

One potential solution to this problem would be to turn off whatever mechanism is redating photos/videos, or changing metadata.  If anyone else is having this issue, please comment below.  Microsoft, is there anything being done to fix this bug???

Thank you, and I respectfully appreciate your attention to this matter.  OneDrive is a great service and I really hope to continue using it.  This is just too big not to make top priority in resolving.

Windows for home | Other | Music, photos, and video

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-14T22:12:14+00:00

    There is no Date Taken, only Date Created and Date Modified which have been changed to the date that I uploaded the pictures.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-05-14T22:15:48+00:00

    I have one image that originally showed a Date Modified of 12-27-2016.  This was the only data that kept it organized by date.  When I uploaded the image, OneDrive changed the Date Modified to the day I uploaded it, 5-13-2018.  Now, this image will not be organized properly by when it was taken.  This hurts very bad.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T14:39:31+00:00

    J Oliver,

    I am most concerned that, if this random OneDrive redating continues, that someday ill look at my pictures and there will be hundreds that are redated again.  Its like i cant feel confident that Microsoft will keep my files intact, and if there’s not something done about it i will have no choice but to move to a different, more stable cloud service.

    Is there something you can do on your end, or send it up to someone, that can find the issue here and fix it?  I would be so relieved to know that this issue has been resolved and that OneDrive will no longer change Date Created and Date Modified when uploading pictures to the cloud.

    Thank you.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T02:01:37+00:00

    J Oliver,

    The reason that I know OneDrive is responsible for changing the metadata is, I have a copy of my original photos and folders on an external drive.  When I noticed that about 10%-20% of my 45,000 photos were redated, I compared them to my external drive backup.  The same photos that were redated on upload by OneDrive retained their original dates on the external drive.  If I had not saved an external backup, separate from the OneDrive folder on Windows Explorer, than I would have had no way to bring back the original dating.

    Most of the photos that were redated were from iPhone pictures that I dragged from the iPhone in Windows Explorer, to folders I setup and dated.  There were also Canon DSLR photos and some scans as well.  Like you said, the redating affect seems to be arbitrary in nature, as it happened with different pictures from different sources and times.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T16:33:22+00:00

    J Oliver,

    I agree that Files On Demand is a useful feature with low disk space.  But i think most people, who check the settings, would select Files On Demand whether low disc space or not just because it seems like a neat feature.  What we are not told, and im sure 99% of people do not know, is that Files On Demand will corrupt picture files or any files with MetaData permantly erasing the creation dates.  If people knew this, 99% of people would not use it.

    So while Files On Demand may be meant to work that way, your users would not want it to work that way and it is not being disclosed that the feature erases metadata.  Can you let me know what will be done to fix this process and/or if you are sending this thread up to the right people to review the issue and make changes?

    i just seriously feel bad for all the thousands of people out there who are currently having their files unknowingly compromised.

    Thanks again!

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