Dropbox post dates photos to 30 Dec 2099

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Amjed S. wrote:

I noticed a few days ago that a batch of photos from an event I attended in 2008 was post dated to 30 Dec 2099.

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The Date Taken or creation date of the photo is 30 Dec 2099. This isn't the same as the date that you see when browsing a list of files. This is the date that gets embedded in the photo by the camera (i.e. the EXIF data). Dropbox reads this data and uses it to organize your photos.

These screenshots shows the Create Date and original date and time fields for a photo that Dropbox groups into the year 2175. This isn't Dropbox doing this. It's whatever camera, or possibly photo editor, you've used that adds these fields to the file. Dropbox simply reads them.

In the case of the photo I used to produce this screenshot, it was an older photo that didn't have any EXIF data embedded it (taken with an old camera), and whatever editor I used on it about a decade ago filled the fields with bogus data, including a date in the year 2175.

To see this for yourself, upload one of your photos to one of the many online EXIF viewers and look for the Date Taken, Create Date or similar fields. There are also EXIF editors (online and offline) that you can use to update the embedded data. Change the date taken for these photos and Dropbox will sort them properly.

This is a screenshot of the same photo's EXIF data after editing it and changing the year to 2025, and how Dropbox sorts the newly edited file.