AgentOrange's avatar
AgentOrange
Collaborator | Level 8
3 years ago
Status:
Closed - Inactive

Preserve file Creation Dates(and other metadata) in mobile app versions

The ability to preserve, view, sort by, etc the original Creation Dates(and other metadata) of files is missing or severely limited in the Dropbox mobile apps.

People who don’t use Dropbox primarily for business purposes on a computer but, as many of us do these days, use our smartphones as our primary(or only) method of keeping track of media/documents/audio files/etc are having to deal with the frustrating situation of trying and failing to backup/reorganize/download to another mobile device/etc our files without losing this extremely important file metadata.

I can’t even view ANY file information on non-photo files, and the photos are difficult to even upload with a title that reflects the actual creation date.

If not uploaded at a painful 1 image at a time (and many times not even then) the file name will be changed to the upload date/time.

The creation date is ALWAYS listed as the upload time or the last time that it was moved, downloaded, re-uploaded, etc.

There’s no sort by CREATION date, only sort by Modification date which is just a complete denial of basic file management for those of us who manage all of our files on mobile phones and tablets.

We desperately need full file information accessibility for Dropbox mobile apps… ESPECIALLY the ability to preserve and sort by the ORIGINAL file creation dates… and to not lose access to those creation dates when moved, renamed, downloaded, re-uploaded, etc, but to keep them intact despite all modifications.

Creation dates and modification dates can be preserved separately without sacrificing one for the other, as long as the files’ metadata remains intact.

26 Comments

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  • onlyone311's avatar
    onlyone311
    Helpful | Level 5
    3 years ago

    also, it will be a good idea to add the last modification date to folder, because is empty, and when you update files on the folders, it's difficult to know what was the last modification

  • KalenJ's avatar
    KalenJ
    Explorer | Level 4
    3 years ago

    I completely agree with this. Google Photos keeps the original date and time and I’ve been using it but I like Dropbox better and I like the look and the file structure and the file management of Dropbox better. I do not like losing my files dates because of Dropbox. So I vote this idea.

  • Megan's avatar
    Megan
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago
    Status changed:
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    to
    Open
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