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

José Oliver-Didier  These responses to Chad's question are symptomatic of a serious internal problem at Microsoft. Frankly, I can't imagine who writes this stuff and why they'd be hired to do so. Like Chad, I have had EVERYTHING kept on OneDrive re-dated THREE TIMES IN THE LAST YEAR. I am at the point where I have to do a separate, manual backup to a non-OneDrive directory several times a day in order to preserve any sense of logic to my library structure and to make sure everything I work on that day is ACCURATELY backed up.

I have noticed similar response problems with answers to MANY other questions on these forums. The advice given often makes me wonder whether those answering actually understand English or are just trotting out canned, inaccurate responses over and over ad nauseum, much like your continued reference to "Date Taken" which has NOTHING to do with the problem at hand. 

Most of us out here DO NOT CARE about all the touchy-feely stuff trotted out to "enhance our computing experience" - all it does is get in the way & hog memory. Rather than employ one patch after another, and MUCH worse build on them, FIX the problems in these newer versions of Windows BEFORE distributing them. The last time I had a reliable, ****-free operating system was when I used Windows XP! These are computers, not some app-dependent "smart" phone. Please stop treating them that way!!!!

Chad - I've had the same problem, as well as others, with the answers provided on these forums. Where in hell are they getting these guys anyway?

Hello all,

Here is a possible fix which may restore the date created and modified values for your files. I as I mentioned in this thread, with OneDrive On Demand feature enabled, the files are kept in the cloud and a downsized placeholder/thumbnail is kept on your PC. When the file is needed, it is re-downloaded and the File Created and File Modified are altered. The downsized place holder does not contain photo capture metadata metadata, so you will need the original file back to your PC in order for this to work. 

First step is to disable OneDrive Files on Demand and download all your files to your PC. This may not work for for people with a collection of files on OneDrive which exceeds your PC available storage.

Then download and setup exiftool, a powerful command line utility and run this command:

 exiftool "-FileCreateDate<CreateDate" "-FileModifyDate<CreateDate" -ext JPG -r DIR

where DIR is the path to your photos. The -r flag means that it will recursively go through your subfolders.

This command will read the "CreateDate" from the file metadata and alter the File Attributes CreateDate and Modified Date to match it. Again, this will only work for files with the CreateDate embedded in the file's EXIF Metadata.

Here is a thread on the EXIFtool forums which explains this further:

http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/exiftool/forum/index.php?topic=5007.0

I would test this out on a small subset of photos first, and as always have backup of your files when performing file modification operations.

Hope this helps

You've got to be kidding, right?  I think you left out the step where you pat your head and rub your stomach, while holding down the Alt key (or is it the ctrl key?).

I have noticed similar response problems with answers to MANY other questions on these forums. The advice given often makes me wonder whether those answering actually understand English or are just trotting out canned, inaccurate responses over and over ad nauseum, much like your continued reference to "Date Taken" which has NOTHING to do with the problem at hand. 

How can you say that the DateTaken field is not related to determining when a picture was taken? Of course that's the field you should be using. The Created field is merely intended to tell you when your LOCAL copy was created (which can mean when it was copied down to your computer from the cloud). 

I have nothing to do with MS, just a user like you, but frustrating when we take our time to contribute to the community and try to help fellow users, only to be greeted with a complaint that the correct answer is not good, because you don't like how file data has been handled by Windows and DOS for the past ~30 years. If MS changed this to support your preference, it would do far more harm than good, because many, many programs and users rely on the Created field being used the way we expect.