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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

93 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T00:35:41+00:00

    I still do not suspect OneDrive is the culprit in this case, as it would need to change the value from within the file itself. Did you modify those photos at any point in time with a photo editor or tool?

    Some time ago I downloaded a photo editing app, it ended stripping metadata upon edit. As another example, Facebook does remove the file's embedded metadata. As such it is not a good photo backup option.

    You mentioned that the photos were organized in dated folders, also some dated back from 1999. If they were acquired from a scanner, most likely they do not have the Date Taken field added to them. Does the filename contain a date? Say 20180504.jpg? I am thinking of trying to restore the Date Taken with a batch command.

    Was this answer helpful?

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. 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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2018-05-15T03:04:25+00:00

    Good that you had a backup!

    I am backing up my photos and metadata as well. After quite some effort in adding captions, tags and other info, I would hate for such scenario to happen.

    Was this answer helpful?

    4 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. 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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2018-05-16T00:38:30+00:00

    One more thing.

    Do you have OneDrive Files On Demand enabled?

    I did a quick test:

    1. Enabled OneDrive Files On Demand
    2. Selected a Photo file with Date Taken metadata and right clicked on it, selected Free Up Space.

    Upon sync, the date taken field was empty.

    Was this answer helpful?

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments