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

TFlip, you are mistaken about the technical aspects of this:

1. All Windows folders set the "Date modified" to be the date the file was added to the folder. That's been that way since before Windows, back in DOS days. It would not be rational to change this for pictures, especially given that there's already a separate field for this that works perfectly called "Date taken"
2. In the current version of Windows 10 (I'm on 1903, not sure how long it has worked this way), for a folder showing Images (every folder has a primary content type of General Items, Documents, Images, Music, or Videos), it is smart enough to actually use the "Date taken" and NOT the "Date modified" (I don't think this was true when this thread started. See the screen capture here, note how the "Date" field (the one Windows shows by default) equals the "Date taken" field and NOT the "Date modified" field. I manually added those 2 columns to the view.

3. To your point that it's only one file at a time that you can access the "Date taken" field, that is also incorrect. As you can see in the screen capture above, I was able to show the "Date taken" field in Explorer. Just set the View to Details, then right click on the header row and add the "Date taken" option. Then it will appear for all files in that folder Explorer. If you want all folders to use this view (probably not for pictures, because Large or Extra Large icons is better for browsing, but if you're troubleshooting dates, this could come in handy as a temporary view for all picture folders), you can go to View -> Options -> View tab -> Apply to Folders to get all folders with pictures to use this view. 

Hope that helps.

Thank you GraniteStateColin

But can you do that to several pictures at one time, or just one by one?

How can I revert to the correct taken date and hour in each picture if I want to do it in batches?

I have thousands of pictures with the wrong date now that I have uploaded them to Onedrive and use the online option only. Updating them pictures by picture is cumbersome.

Thanks in advance!

I'm more inclined to believe wcni is spoofing the thread but... your solution though attempting at helpful is contraproductive.

I've added the files to onedrive and onedrive is supposed to be my drive just online so as long as what you're suggesting doesn't work online it's not a real solution. 

The fact that not all photos get a date taken is of course another issue, and I have raised that to the current phone-developer. Since that also is seemingly random.

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.

I am not a huge expert on this, having just uploaded my camera roll from my phone to OneDrive, around 600 photos.   They all contained both date taken and - equally important for those pictures of bluebells where you don't remember exactly where you were

• GPS information.

If I go to my OneDrive folder on my p/c, this information is not there.   But it isn't lost - in the file that is sitting on OneDrive's servers, all the metadata is still there and is uncorrupted - camera used, f stop, exposure, GPS etc etc.     

As explained elsewhere, what is visible on your computer in File Manager is just a stripped-down placeholder - if you double click the image, it gets downloaded from the cloud to your p/c and the metadata becomes visible again.

It would be REALLY helpful if OneDrive could consider GPS and Date Taken as critical information which should also be visible in the placeholder version on your p/c, but in my brief experience, the transfer process is not guilty of changing the data.

That's a great point. It's not my problem -- I have my OneDrive set to full sync and download everything to my PC, but for some others who are using the placeholders/Sync on Demand, that could explain why they're not seeing them.