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

The problem extends far beyond photo collections. 

I need to deal with CAD files,  word processing files PDF files  etc all of which have no use for date taken meta data.   I have attempted ( am attempting ) to use ONE DRIVE as a remote physical logical drive without any syncronization  and  create version folder names such as   CAD 03-17-20  to copy (not move) cad files to using Windows Explorer.    

I sometimes have the need when merging folders of word processing files by copying a folder into another folder where I want to overwrite only older files. ( I use Teracopy Pro )  I cannot afford for the operating system to be changing date created info.

For everyone contributing here,  do not assume that only PHOTO files are being used.

@GregoryPerkins1, "Created" value is set when a file is added to a volume, regardless of the age of the file. The operating system absolutely will change the Created field. That is not a reliable field for knowing anything about the file. For that, you need to use the Modified date (which is part of the file) or use one of the other fields, which vary by file type.

But also note that your post is actually a different question. You said "do not assume that only PHOTO files are being used," but the question here was about photos. The answers differ depending on the file type. For photos, and only for photos, there is a Date Taken field. Your CAD and other documents won't have that option.

The problem extends far beyond photo collections.   

I need to deal with CAD files,  word processing files PDF files  etc all of which have no use for date taken meta data.   I have attempted ( am attempting ) to use ONE DRIVE as a remote physical logical drive without any syncronization  and  create version folder names such as   CAD 03-17-20  to copy (not move) cad files to using Windows Explorer.    

I sometimes have the need when merging folders of word processing files by copying a folder into another folder where I want to overwrite only older files. ( I use Teracopy Pro )  I cannot afford for

the operating system to be changing date created info.

For everyone contributing here,  do not assume that only PHOTO files are being used.

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.

We have the same problem above.

As indicated in an earlier post, the File Explorer | Properties | Details allows the date portion of "Date Taken" field to be edited.  But the Time portion of this EXIF field cannot be edited in File Explorer.  If you shoot 100 images in one day, you lose your ability to control or alter the sequence with the time of each image.  If you have many thousands of photo files, it may be impractical to edit the Date Taken on each one.  

I know I need help to perfect my workflow, but here is a start:  (1) Import from SD card with Multi Commander (or equivalent) with the setting to preserve all EXIF dates/times.  I personally prefer to focus on one folder for each month/year.  (2) Screen all photos and their dates.  (3) Move unusable photos to a Trash folder (review it later), and note those files that need date correction.  (3) Make a backup of these usable photos.  If you mess up the following steps, you don't have to go back and begin again.  (4) Use bulk file correction software such as EXIF Date Changer Pro (Rellik Software) or File Date Corrector (Infonautics GMBH) to fix the dates that need correction.  (5) Use Advanced Renamer to rename all files to include the date and time and possibly the location derived from GPS data.  Advanced Renamer lets you format date/time as you like, and it adds location names to go with the GPS coordinates.  Now when I see an old file named "2017.07.04  11.35.12  Napili-Honokowai," I know it's one of our favorite small resorts in Maui, and I know I have followed the workflow to make the dates reliable.

With old photo files and scanned photos, there is a need to fix or add dates and GPS one by one on all photo files.  You can use Picasa or Geosetter or equivalent to add GPS map coordinates.

!!!!!!!!!!    HERE IS A SOLUTION GUYS       !!!!!!!!

January 3, 2020

The same **** happened to me last night and it really pissed me off, so I've been testing different methods, etc to find a work-around but......    It seems it was there, built-in all the time. However they must have kept it a secret to the support people who are supposed to furnish answers and solutions instead of projecting a laissez-faire attitude toward us, their clients.  C'est la vie.....

STEPS TO DOWNLOAD IMAGE FILES FROM GOOGLE PHOTOS

AND

RETAIN DATE, DATE TAKEN, AND DATE CREATED FIELDS

1)      Go to photos.google.com 

2)    Click on selection or all photos with dot in upper left-hand corner of image

3)      Click on hamburger

4)      Click on Edit Date & Time

5)      Choose Shift dates & times (Photos keep their relative time difference)

6)   The Date and Time fields will default to value of image file with earliest (or oldest depending on your perspective) entries.

7)     Click on Preview to view Dates and Times of files

8)      Click Save. The dot indicating the selected file(s) will now disappear.

9)  Re-select those files you wish to download as in #2 above

10)  Click on hamburger and choose Download. Files will be zipped and downloaded to your computer with the Date, Date Taken, &         Date Created fields left unscathed including these three Date fields in the EXIF Metadata. Also the Date Taken field in the EXIF            metadata will remain as it was and will not be stripped. 

NOTE: Image files downloaded from Google Drive (as opposed to Google Photos) will download without any extra hoops & ladders and will retain all original Date field values.

Yes, this is a royal pain in the **** and requires MUCH more that it really should, but it wouldn’t be Google if it wasn’t this way. They are allergic to documentation and on-going education of their support people and thrive on keeping things moot to make them feel better and keep us bourgeois folks in their proper place.

Aloha,

Forrest