Date of uploaded items changes to today when I copy or upload to Dropbox

[esthera]

Hi everybody,
I have a dropbox account and I'm uploading and copying pictures and documents to my account. But there is a problem. The date of the pictures and documents changes in the date of today (the day I upoaded/copied them). But I don't want to change the date because I want the original date. Is there something I can do about it?

Thanks for helping 🙂

Esther

[Rich · Accepted solution]

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@esthera wrote:

I have a dropbox account and I'm uploading and copying pictures and documents to my account. ... The date of the pictures and documents changes in the date of today ...

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This is normal if you're uploading files to your account. The files are newly created on the Dropbox server, so their date will show the date that the file was created in Dropbox. This is the same as when you download a file from some website to your computer. The downloaded file will have the date and time of the download because the file is being newly created on your computer.

If you want to maintain the files' original modified date, install the Dropbox application on your computer and allow the files to sync to your account instead of manually uploading them.

[OLDSQUISHY]

New to all this and thinking about changing away from Dropbox because of the date issue..I don’t want to sync files and run the risk of any of the files I am backing up from being deleted from my computer.  I absolutely have to leave the date show as the date the file was created on my computer as that is how they are organized.  Is there no field in the Dropbox version that shows the original creation date?  I only use Dropbox to back up files manually…please advise…

[HR_Pilot]

This didn't used to be this way.  I have photos from a while ago that have the date taken/created and not the current date.  Downloading photos as the current date messes things up big time.  If I don't download photos in real time and wait a day/week/month then it shows up in my date sort at the top.  Wrong!  

Recently my phone ran out of memory.   I realized there were a lot of photos and videos I had not downloaded.  So I did then deleted them from my phone.  I expected the files to be in camera uploads when they were taken, not when I downloaded them.

How can I stop this from happening?

[HR_Pilot]

Recently, Dropbox started changing the date of my downloaded photos from my cell phone.

Before, it uploaded my photos  with the date the photo was taken.

Now it uploads them putting the current time on the file.

This messes up sorting files by date if I don't upload a file for a day/week/month.

How can I get it to use the date taken, the original date of the photo file.

[Walter]

Hey @HR_Pilot - thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Could you please clarify your device's OS version and the version of the Dropbox mobile app installed there as well?

Also, could you confirm that you're referring only to files you've uploaded via the Camera Uploads feature and not manually through the (+) button within the mobile app? 

When did you first notice this issue by the way?

Any additional information or screenshots are more than welcome!