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File date changing
Hi
I have seen a number of posts about DropBox changing file dates to "date modified" which appears to be the date the file was uploaded to DropBox. This is weird because if you are just uploadin...
Hi Steve53, thanks for messaging today!
Are you referring to the date modified as it appears on the Dropbox site, or how it appeared in Explorer/Finder?
In general, if a file is uploaded directly to the Dropbox site, the modification and creation date are for that moment. Likewise, downloading a file from the website onto your computer has both the creation and modification date to be for the moment.
If an old file is moved into a syncing Dropbox folder, and is then edited later, then the creation date is of the old file, and the modification date is whenever it is edited. These two dates are synced to any machine where the app is installed.
If you need any more details, feel free to message back!
I agree it's crazy that dropbox does this. Five years later, and this still happens… Files uploaded from my android phone to the dropbox app on android maintain the original creation date, but as soon as I get access to the same files on the web version or desktop app on my mac, the creation date has changed to the upload date. There is no rationale for this, Dropbox should not change file metadata without my consent! Luckily the Exif metadata are still intact and one can use apps such as A better finder to retrieve that information and pass it on to Finder, but it shouldn't be that difficult… I also noticed that location metadata may be lost, particularly on videos, so once a video is imported into the Mac file system, the location metadata are not recognised any more.
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