Does Dropbox keep the original modification date?

[agundlach]

Does Dropbox maintain the original file modified date when a file is uploaded? If so, how do you see it?

[Jay]

Hi @agundlach, thanks for messaging the Community!

This depends on how you sync the file to your account, and how the file is edited or saved. Generally, if a file in the Dropbox folder, and is then edited and saved, the modification date of the file would change to the current time.

Uploading any file from your machine to the Dropbox site would make the modification date to be that moment, even if the file was created on a different date.

You should be able to see the original creation date of the file according to Dropbox in the version history of the file itself.

If you need any more info, please let me know.

[agundlach]

Thank you, Jay! I am planning to upload several years' worth of files to Dropbox to store as an archive. Does this mean that the "modified date" of each file will be the date of upload, and I will lose all of the historical dates of my files last edits?

[Jay · Accepted solution]

If you're uploading to the site directly on the browser, then yes, you'll have today's date.

If you're moving the files into a Dropbox folder on your machine, then the OS should keep the original dates, and those are the dates that will appear on the Dropbox site when they sync up.

[StudioA]

Since the recent system upgrade (August 2022), the dates do not change to the uploaded dates, when using a browser. This is a big problem for us, we need to track the dates we post files vs. when they were created. Any ideas? So far the Dropbox support has not been at all helpful.

[Jay]

Hi @StudioA, could you clarify exactly what's happening with this new behavior? How are you uploading files to the site?

[StudioA]

We are uploading from Macs and it does not matter whether we  drag and drop, upload folders or individual files, the files (MP3s & WAVs) keep the creation date. We have tried different browsers as well. Also the problem is not consistent, we can upload a folder and some file dates within the folder will change to date of upload. We never had this issue until the system upgrade a few weeks ago. We need our files the reflect date of upload, was that way for over 5 years. Dropbox customer support has been beyond slow and very disappointing so far. Any ideas?

[Nancy]

Hey @StudioA, sorry for jumping in. 

Can you please let me know if you’re still experiencing the same issue on your Dropbox account, so that we can investigate this further?

[Peter Marigold]

I'm having this same issue... it is totally bananas.

I'm trying to back up a large SD card stretching back years as it has all my family photos on - 256gb.

Obviously the critical part of this is that all the photos are kept in date order so that they are chronological. This is just maybe the most basic feature of a group of photographs over time so that you can find them in the future.

It's such a massive amount of images and films that I'm doing it in stages - uploading by months and years. I accidentally uploaded about a years worth of files in the wrong order, and to make sure they were definitely backed up, I went back and started that year from January again... but then dropbox treated those files as new files as they have a new 'date modified' date. So effectively I now have many gigs of duplicated files in my dropbox.

It's insane. No other OS treats moving a file as a modification. Why has dropbox decided that this is a helpful thing to do?????

[Jay]

Hi @Peter Marigold, we appreciate the feedback on this matter. We take all comments into consideration when improving the Dropbox service.