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Dropbox photos not staying 100% in chronological order

Hi! Basically, it's exactly what the title says. It's got nothing to do with the date I uploaded the pictures, but the file names themselves. For example, I've been scanning, cataloguing and organising my mum's old wedding photos (actual photos on paper from 30 years ago) and before I uploaded them, when I saved the scanned files, I gave them chronological order names with the event, date (year-month-day) and then appendix numbers. E.g Mum's wedding 1991-05-26 0001, 0002, etc. But they won't stay in chronological order in the Dropbox folder they're in. I have them in chronological order up to #40. Then it jumps to #100-160 (in chronological order) then goes back to 41, 42 etc (again in chronological order).

My normal digital pics are even worse for this. For example, when I search DSC 025 I get DSC 0250, then DSC 0255, then 0256, then 0252, then 0257, then 0254, then 0251, 0253 and 0259. I just want them in the right order and stay like that. This might be a simple case of setting it to organise by name but I'm unable to do that; I can see group by relevance and last modified when I search and when I got to the specific folder where my mum's wedding pics are it's set to organise by name but I still get that situation of half chronological and half not (those are TIFF files compared to my digital pics being in JPG but not sure that matters)

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Accepted answers

Daphne

Thanks for those screenshots, it's very helpful indeed @li123.

From what I could see in the folder you're having this issue with, it seems this is because the images 101 - 160 have the same date (1991-05-26) as the images up to number 40.

The images 41 and after have a different date which is the reason why they come afterwards (1991-06-26).

Was this maybe a typo and the dates are supposed to be the same?

All comments

Daphne

Hey @li123, I hope you're having a good day!

Just to make sure we're on the same page, can you let me know where you're checking your files from? Eg. the mobile app, desktop app or website.

You should be able to click the "Name" column header to make sure that you're sorting by naming order, does this make any difference?

Let me know and we'll go from there!

li123

@Daphne I'm on the website; haven't tried it with a mobile app yet but I presume it would be the same. If I'm searching by filename for my photos, it will only let me group by relevance and last modified but if I go to the folder where those photos are stored it seems to be fine. So it's only on the one specific folder where this is causing me an issue; half in chronological order, then skips maybe 20 photos (all in chronological order) then back in chronological order. I think the photos below explain what I mean better. That's with the folder set to filter by name. If I filter by type (image) or extension (TIFF) they go out of order (which is obviously expected). I find it odd as it's seemingly just the one folder. Screen Shot 2021-03-01 at 7.52.26 pm.png

Daphne

BernadetteMadden

I am new to Dropbox and have a similar problem. I use a MacBook Pro 2020, macOS Big Sur. I have over 26,000 photographs in Dropbox and want to put them in chronological order, from oldest to most recent, by date taken. By date taken I mean the date the photos were ACTUALLY TAKEN, not when they were modified. I've tried when using the App and also accessing via the website,with no success. How, exactly, do I do this?

Walter

Hey there @BernadetteMadden - thanks for joining the discussion here and welcome to our Community.

At the moment, you can sort files via two options on our website: 'Order' and 'Show’, by clicking on the column header.

'Order’ will determine if what is shown is displayed ascending or descending while ‘Show’ will display any of the following in the website’s file browser: name, type, extension, size, modified date, or members.

Depending on your computer's operating system, there may be additional sorting options on the Dropbox desktop application, such as tags, date created, date added, etc.

I hope this helps to some extent!

BernadetteMadden

Thank you for you reply. However , it does not address the problem that the date used for sorting is the date modified. NOT the date the photograph was taken.I take most of my photographs in a planned time sequence, so it is important that they remain in that sequence. As I said in my email. I use a MacBook Pro 2020, macOS Big Sur and Preview. Do you have any advice re this combination please?

Jay

Hi @BernadetteMadden, this would depend on how the Mac OS shows files in Finder, and wouldn't be related to Dropbox itself.

Have you tried selecting the columns and choosing the Date created column and sorting via that method?

BernadetteMadden

Thank you, but I've already tried all those options. I have wasted an awful lot of time searching the net and have not found the answer to my problem. So, let me ask you a simple question : Is it ever possible to take a number of photographs, which are on a Mac in the correct order of the date each photograph was taken, and store them in Dropbox in exactly the same order? A simple yes or no will do.

Jay

It would be possible if you numbered the images at the beginning of each filename, such as 00001, 00002, etc (since you have over 26k images) in the order you want them, and then sort the files in alphabetical order on the Dropbox site.

BernadetteMadden

Thank you...but I think we both know that adding a number to each image when there are over 26,000 is not a realistic solution to my problem.

Jay

While there isn't a feature to rename files using Dropbox itself, there are other apps and services which could automatically batch rename the files for you, including built-in features in Mac OS.

BernadetteMadden

I don't want to have to rename files, just keep the dates and times that the photos were taken and sort them that way.The data is still on the images, Dropbox just isn't reading it. If this can't be done in Dropbox please let me know.Or if you know of another app that will enable Dropbox to do this could you let me know that too please.

Jay

It wouldn't be possible to sort the images on the Dropbox site by creation date.

The only sorting options on the site are by name, modification date. number of invited members, type of file, file extension, and finally the size of the file.

BernadetteMadden

Thank you for finally giving me a straight answer to my question. I'm sorry that Dropbox can't sort by the original date the image was taken, as it means I will no longer be able to use it. I notice that there a lot of people out there who also file their images in that way so perhaps Dropbox might consider adding it to their 'sort by ' choices.

Jay

If you wish, you can suggest this change for others to vote on, so the dev team can look into this in future!

BrianP

Dear Jay at Dropbox. This has to be the most life-wasting reply I've ever read. How long do you think it would take a human being to put numerically chronological digits in front of Apple's weird file naming system (presumably done as an encryptive method to defy people using non-Apple softwares?)

I have a similar dilemma as I am trying to get my daughter's holiday snaps from her iPhone into a Dropbox folder of our choice. She doesn't have sufficient memory left on her Laptop PC to do this in one go so we are attempting to find an alternative approach. Please assist. It is the .jpeg files that are the major issue - the .jpg files are seemingly okay as they are titled in the format of :

" Photo date, timestamp "

whereas the .jpeg files have the weird (Apple?) format of :

a random mix of upper case letters & numbers in the following sequences:

" 8 DIGITS-4DIGITS-4DIGITS-4DIGITS-12DIGITS"

Hannah

Hey @BrianP, thanks for your feedback here.

Have you tried manually uploading the photos through the (+) icon in the Dropbox app?

The 8 DIGITS-4DIGITS-4DIGITS-4DIGITS-12DIGITS format shouldn't appear when the images are uploaded to Dropbox.

BernadetteMadden

I have over 50,000 photos at the moment ,so, NO.....manually uploading is not the answer