Changing file created date time

[GreenLantern22]

I am copying some photos from my iPhone to my PC. When the images get copied the created date time of the copied files is set as the current date time. This is not good as I want to be able to sort the pictures by date time. Fortunately the modified date time is preserved but here are my issues:

1) How can I copy the modified date time of a file into the created date time of the file? Note that I have hundreds of images so a manual approach is not feasible.

2) The second issue I have is that the Search and Replace option is changing the modified date time of the file. I would like to preserve the modified date time when using the Search and Replace option, is this possible?

3) The third issue I have is that I want to be able to rename all my files sorted modified date time. So suppose I have 3 files as follows (for simplicity of the example I am only using dates and no times):

Name Modified date time
File1 1/1/2009
File2 1/1/2010
File3 1/1/2008

I would like to be able to rename these files as follows:

Name Modified date time
001_File3 1/1/2008
002_File1 1/1/2009
003_File2 1/1/2010

so that the file name creates an automatic sort on the Modified date time. Any ideas how to do that?

Thanks!

[RalphM]

1) Might need a little script looping through all selected files and using the timestamp scripting command on each file. (I'm sure there are some examples around, if you search the forum for timestamp)

2) Don't know whether there's any setting changing this behaviour.

3) Easy, sort the list by the date column then select all and do a rename special with a pattern like <#001>_*

[admin]

1) If the modified date happens to be the exif date, then there is this: File / File Special / Set Created Date to Exif

2) Really? Not here. Renaming never changes the modified date of a file.

[avsfan]

1) I need to do this regularly, so I created a User-Defined Command (UDC). The script command that will do it is:
timestamp, '<datem>'

I assign a keyboard shortcut and then just select the files I want to change, hit the shortcut, and it's done.

I hope this helps!

andy

[GreenLantern22]

1) If the modified date happens to be the exif date, then there is this: File / File Special / Set Created Date to Exif

2) Really? Not here. Renaming never changes the modified date of a file.

1) That works like a charm, thanks. Any chance of adding the same feature for modified dates? i.e. "Set Modified Date to Exif". Even better if there was a function to set all the files dates as per Exif.

2) I updated my XYplorer to the last version and I see the modified date changing on renaming but not on every case! I have done further testing and I am banging my head against the wall as I can't figure out what triggers it. So far I can see:

- It only happens on XYlorer, not on Windows Explorer.
- It happens with a manual rename, Search and Replace not guilty.
- It only happens with files with a .JPG extension. If I change the file extension to .1JPG and then rename the file, it doesn't happen. But when I change the file back to .JPG and rename it again, it will then happen.
- It doesn't happen on all of my drives. The drive where this happens is a 5.45 TB RAID 5 volume mounted on the W: drive letter as a dynamic disk (may be that's the culprit?).

Will keep testing to see if I can get more info...

[admin]

1) "Set Modified Date to Exif" ? Or "Set File Dates to Exif"? Hm, not sure about the demand for this. Any photographers out there?

2) Let me know if you find something. I've hever heard about renaming changing a time stamp.

[admin]

Whatever, the next version will have "Set Modified Date to Exif" right in the File menu. (The command already exists in the current version in CKS | Miscellaneous | Timestamp since v8.30.0000 - 2009-08-31).

[GreenLantern22]

It has been raining for weeks in the UK so I finally had time to get back to this. Donald many thanks for adding the option, it works great!

Andy thanks for your tip, it's been really useful! I used the Exif options to fix my images but I was still having date issues with my videos. There are several cases where Windows changes the created date time so I had lots of files I wanted to correct their dates. I now use XYplorer Custom Copy operation with the "Preserve all item dates" option checked, so I don't have to fix any images or videos after copying them from my flash media. But I still had a lot of historical videos I had to fix and this script does the job easily.