No Writeable tag

[maverickd]

I am trying to organize a lot of photos and vids by datetaken. I am using the cmd below. I am seeing a ton of errors about no writeable tag and a warning about MS Photos which I have no idea where that's from. I've pasted some of the errors below. I searched the forums and I've seen a bunch of things about this error but I'm not clear on what it is and what to do. What is the best option to resolve this if I want to organize these things by the datetaken?

exiftool -r "-FileName=e:\organized\MissingDate\%f%-c.%e" "-Filename<CreateDate" -d e:\organized\%Y\%Y_%m/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e e:\mess

Code Select Expand

Warning: [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto - e:/mess/020-4.JPG
Warning: No writable tags set from e:/mess/020-4.JPG
Warning: [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto - e:/mess/020.JPG
Warning: No writable tags set from e:/mess/20051001_00023 12-17-2005 6-32-93.JPG
Warning: No writable tags set from e:/mess/20051001_00023 12-17-2005 7-32-54 AM 1672x1254.JPG
Warning: No writable tags set from e:/mess/20051001_00023 7-17-2006 11-39-46 PM 480x360.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from e:/mess/2018-11-15_20-55-11_000 (2019-04-17T06_14_22.824).jpeg
Warning: No writable tags set from e:/mess/2018-11-15_20-55-11_000 (2019-04-17T06_14_22.894).jpeg

[Phil Harvey]

The "No writable tag" message indicates that nothing was changed.  This happens if you are copying tags but none of the source tags exist.  If you are copying from a date/time tag, you can fix this by also copying from FileModifyDate which always exists.  Just do this on the command line before the argument to copy the other date/time tag and ExifTool will use FileModifyDate as a fallback if the other tag doesn't exist.

eg.  exiftool "-filename<filemodifydate" "-filename<datetimeoriginal" -d ...

- Phil

Edit: You edited your post to add the command after I answered, so my advance was based on a guess about what you were doing

[StarGeek]

Copying from FileModifyDate negates the
"-FileName=e:\organized\MissingDate\%f%-c.%e"
operation to move files without a date into a separate directory.

As long as the files are ending up in the right place, these warnings can be ignored.

[Phil Harvey]

Thanks StarGeek.

Or you can add -api NoWarning="No writable" to your command to avoid this specific warning.

- Phil

Edit:  I've added FAQ 33 to explain this.

[maverickd]

Hi,
Thank you! So for the files that are getting the no writeable tag error, it looks like they are getting moved to the missing date folder.

The cmd I was using is below.
exiftool -r "-FileName=e:\organized\MissingDate\%f%-c.%e" "-Filename<CreateDate" -d e:\organized\%Y\%Y_%m/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e e:\mess

Now if I change the cmd to the one below here that should move files that don't have a create date based on their modified date right?
exiftool -r "-filename<filemodifydate" "-Filename<CreateDate" -d e:\organized\%Y\%Y_%m/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e e:\mess

[Phil Harvey]

Correct.