# Photos without a date - problem with auto-import of video, screenshots etc through LR Mobile



## tracyclayton (Aug 16, 2020)

Hi - I'm a long-time reader of this forum, which has excellent advice, so thank you!

I've come across what seems to be a potential bug today.  I use the LR mobile (Android) to auto-import both photos and videos from my phone to LR Classic on a Windows PC, so they sit alongside photos taken on my cameras, in date order. I noticed today that videos in the last month or so weren't showing where I expected them to be in All Photos on the mobile app, or in the relevant date folder in Classic. By searching the file name for one of the videos I found they've all been listed as 'Photos without a Date' and put in a folder with the date 1970-01-01 on my hard drive in LR Classic. 

The same seems to be happening for screenshots and downloaded images etc (I'm not worried about these as I'm actually quite happy these are being excluded - I'd love a way to stop certain categories from uploading automatically!)

Can anyone confirm if this is a bug - prior to 17 July, videos (and the screenshots etc) were appearing in the correct date order and downloading ok to correctly dated folders. Any light you can shed on this would be gratefully received - thanks!


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## PhilBurton (Aug 16, 2020)

Tracy,
Since you use Windows, get this tool.  Download ExifToolGUI 5.16.0.0

Work with a COPY of your files, while you learn how EXIFToolGUI works.   Navigate to the folder that contains the copies.  I should mention that I do this work outside of Lightroom (my personal workflow - others may differ) and that I remove the photos at issue from the catalog but not from the disk drive.  After I have finished all the date/time work, I re-import these photos into Lightroom.

Select at least one file, then select the MODIFY tab at the top and then the  DateTime Shift menu item.  This option allows you to change dates for one or more photos by a fixed amount for years, months, dates, hours, minutes, and seconds.

You might be amazed at the number of places that a timestamp is potentially stored, either in Windows or in the EXIF data of your photo.  You will probably need to experiment a bit until you achieve my ideal state, where the Windows Explorer file date/time matches the various EXIF date/times.  Note the checkbox for increment or decrement of existing values.

For future reference, I suggest that you keep a log of your work, so you can use this tool the next time you have any time-zone or general time-related issues.

Phil Burton


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## tracyclayton (Aug 17, 2020)

PhilBurton said:


> Tracy,
> Since you use Windows, get this tool.  Download ExifToolGUI 5.16.0.0
> 
> Work with a COPY of your files, while you learn how EXIFToolGUI works.   Navigate to the folder that contains the copies.  I should mention that I do this work outside of Lightroom (my personal workflow - others may differ) and that I remove the photos at issue from the catalog but not from the disk drive.  After I have finished all the date/time work, I re-import these photos into Lightroom.
> ...





PhilBurton said:


> Tracy,
> Since you use Windows, get this tool.  Download ExifToolGUI 5.16.0.0
> 
> Work with a COPY of your files, while you learn how EXIFToolGUI works.   Navigate to the folder that contains the copies.  I should mention that I do this work outside of Lightroom (my personal workflow - others may differ) and that I remove the photos at issue from the catalog but not from the disk drive.  After I have finished all the date/time work, I re-import these photos into Lightroom.
> ...


Hi Phil - thanks for this advice. Although now I know files are being imported with the wrong capture date, I can modify that from within Lightroom. Is there a particular benefit of using EXIFToolGUI?

I'm more interested to find out if this is a bug, seeing as all files auto-imported from my phone had the correct date prior to 17 July! Now videos, screenshots etc all have 1/1/1970, while photos are still importing correctly.

Thanks again for the reply.


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## PhilBurton (Aug 17, 2020)

tracyclayton said:


> Hi Phil - thanks for this advice. Although now I know files are being imported with the wrong capture date, I can modify that from within Lightroom. Is there a particular benefit of using EXIFToolGUI?
> 
> I'm more interested to find out if this is a bug, seeing as all files auto-imported from my phone had the correct date prior to 17 July! Now videos, screenshots etc all have 1/1/1970, while photos are still importing correctly.
> 
> Thanks again for the reply.


Tracy,

Of course you can modify dates within Lightroom.  Going from old memory, Lightroom did not modify the Windows dates.  I may be a bit OCD about all this, but I wanted Windows dates (created, modified) to line up with EXIF dates that are the "real dates" when the photo was taken.  To be sure, do your own experiments, but always on a copy.  And if Windows dates are not important for you, then maybe EXIFToolGUI is simply extra work.


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