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
    2019-05-06T04:23:53+00:00

    Today I thought I was having the same problem.  I am using the OneDrive website from an Android phone. I verified OneDrive is NOT changing Date Taken field. 

    However, in the Photos section, it is showing old photos I just uploaded using the Date Created field instead of Date Taken.... Let me explain. 

    I saved some photos from March 31st that someone sent me. Their Date Taken field is correct  On my phone, the Date Created field says today, which is correct since I just downloaded them. 

    So when I upload them, the Photos section shows them under May (Date Created) instead of March (Date Taken). 

    This really needs to be fixed. 

    EDIT: Even stranger, OneDrive updates Date Created to be the time I uploaded it, making its Date Created greater than its Date Modified. I also can't even find the Date Taken field (at least on the mobile site). I have to download it first and then I can see that Date Taken is still correct.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-05-02T09:17:55+00:00

    Hi piscov,

    May this software can help you... https://www.advancedrenamer.com/

    I use it for rename my files

    YPh.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-03-14T04:48:17+00:00

    Now that was the first helpful answer in this thread an something I will use... a plausible workaround.

    Thank you.

    Still want the option on onedrive via browser though to be satisfied.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-03-13T22:16:51+00:00

    Lucky_Blues, you are correct that you only get a small subset of the metadata online... IF you are going through a browser. However, if you are on a Windows 10 computer (not sure if it also works on Mac or older versions of Windows), you can add your OneDrive online, then you get access to all the capabilities and metadata visible through Windows Explorer.

    To do that, you don't have to sync the local folder and pull down possibly GB of pictures, but you do need to pull the individual image down temporarily from the cloud. You can do this by double-clicking any image or going through several in an image viewer or slide show -- after any image opens, the OneDrive icon will change from a cloud to a white circle with a green check (this means it's temporarily available locally, solid green circle with a white check means it's permanently sync'd and stored locally). At this point, you can edit all metadata, which will sync to the cloud, and then the file will leave your local drive after a while on its own or you can right-click it and select "Free up space" to force it to leave right away.

    Note that "Date Taken" appears both in the browser view and the Explorer view, but it appears you can't change it through the browser (I think that was your point). You can only edit Date Taken through Explorer.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-03-12T22:40:10+00:00

    Unhelpful and irrelevant comment wcni

    Either date created needa to be untouched or date taken value needs to be editable so that photos can be arranged properly.

    Lucky_Blues, I think what wcni meant was, "The 'Date taken' for an image file (i.e., the date it was taken) is held in the files' metadata." (replaced 'Date Created' with 'Date Taken'). OneDrive may change the "Date Created" value, because that's the date the file is created on the current volume and has nothing to do with when the file came into existence. The "Date Taken" is an editable field set by your camera (so camera needs to support it) that should be the timestamp on the picture when it was actually taken.

    To your demand -- yes, you can edit Date Taken:

    1. Right click on the file in Explorer, whether it's on your local drive or a placeholder to the file in the cloud on OneDrive.
    2. Select Properties
    3. Go to the Details tab
    4. In the "Origin" group, you will see "Date taken" you can change this if you want

    That's it. Piece of cake!

    Cheers

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