Control renaming of files uploaded via camera uploads.

[Thomas W.2]

Is it possible to change the file name pattern of camera upload?
It looks like it is "yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss" at the moment.
I would like to get "yyyymmdd_hhmmss", as I'm using that since years.
Can the pattern be changed?
(I know there are tools to do these kind of changes, but if Dropbox would support it out of the box, would be great)

[Walter]

This idea has been closed as it has reached the end of the Share an Idea process.

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do! 

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[Rich]

Is it possible to change the file name pattern of camera upload?

No, it's not.

[Dimitar T.]

You can that with two simple Power Shell commands executed in the camera uploads folder

• Dir | Rename-Item –NewName { $_.name –replace “\.(\d)|\-(\d)“,'$1' }
• Dir | Rename-Item –NewName { $_.name –replace “ “,”_” }

[Knute S.]

I use Camera Upload on several devices and it would be great if the filename could append the device name to allow sorting/filing based on which device the pictures came from.  Outside that; awesome capability.

[DPattee]

I recently upgraded my account and my photo upload finally completed - about 17 gigs of photos from my iPhone. 

Apparently Dropbox Mobile decided to rename all the files. That's less than ideal, since my Lightroom workflow is based on photos having a sequence number. 

Given the file name Image-0123.jpg Lightroom automatically names my files iPhone7-0123, or Canon70D2-6234.png, or whatever, and then splits them out in to monthly folders. 

Now that there is no sequence number, my Lightroom import naming breaks. 

Worse, Dropbox by default uses a file naming convention that many other apps use to indicate a file is a duplicate (by adding a -2, -3, etc to the end) and having inconsistent naming adds an extra layer of complexity in trying to get filenames back to normal. 

What a mess.

Please add an option to override the auto-renaming - I really would have been better off if you'd copied the files over with their Img-1234.jpg names rather than trying to "fix it" for me.

[Rich]

Moved to Share an idea.

[nickg]

Similar issue... I'm trying to clean up some old files off of my mobile device, and I wanted to check that the file/s are backed up before removing.

Unfortunately it's impossible to reconcile, and verify what is backed up. The filenames (and sizes) are completely different!

Mobile:  20171007_171001.mp4 (554MB)

Dropbox: 2017-10-08 09.14.32.mp4 (553.68MB)

Please help!

Additionally, it'd be nice if:

• I had an overlay in my file explorer, to tell me files are backed up (e.g. green tick)
• Dropbox had an auto-cleanup policy (if file is older than 3 months, and backed up to the cloud, then delete from device)

[KellyMMS]

Is there any way to stop Dropbox from renaming files that are auto uploaded from my iphone?  I have a very specific file nameing structure once I bring an image into Lightroom and prefer that the filenames be left as assigned by my phone.

[Jane]

Hey @KellyMMS, thanks for sharing your interest on this functionality. While this isn’t currently possible if you’re using the Camera Uploads feature, it has been a popular feature request & for that reason I’ve moved your post into this conversation, as the Share an Idea :light_bulb: section is closely monitored by our team specialists. 

It would be worth mentioning that you can still upload your photos manually, using the (+) button, that would preserve the original filename. Cheers!

[greg_minshall]

i strongly support allowing user control of photo renaming.  (including some way of disambiguating two files that might otherwise have the same name, adding a "-%n" to append a "uniquifying" number, say.)

this renaming is the main thing keeping me from enabling the automatic photo upload feature (which i'd otherwise really like to use).

[BoxyBeat]

Stop renaming my files! (on auto phone upload)

Case:  Video file recorded on my phone., approx 10sec long, 

1. On my phone:
Filename is:
20200123_000803.mp4
I think it's safe to assume it's HHMMSS there at the end.

2. Opened Dropbox on my phone and I've let it do it's thing (sync / upload )

3. This is the file name I have on my computer
Dropbox sync folder:
2020-01-23 00.08.14.mp4

Dropbox renames the file to the final write time.
PLEASE DON'T !

3. When uploading manually to Dropbox, filename stays as the original. Great !

So, I don't see any reason in the world the files should be renamed at all like that.
Sure, if there's a conflict, add a suffix but otherwise, why really ?

The relevant time is the time when the recording has started not ended.
If I need to muticam edit, it's a mess since recordings can stop at any random time and it means nothing.
The way I see it, you are tempering with my files.
Is there a reason why you need to read the metadata on the file or the timestamp ?
Further more, the renaming is done in a syntax that I didn't choose,
with dashes, sapces and periods. Why not use also some underscores, hypens, commas ?

Thanks for loooking into this !