its not working, i dont get it please help me

[LazyDe]

Sorry for my bad English, I'm from German, which makes it harder for me to understand everything, including my knowledge of everything about information technology based solely on googling

my Problem
after I have done everything as described, the program does something but changes nothing, as an example, the creation date of the image is the same as the download date from Google, but it was originally made in 2011, so it is also in the json file, I thought the program was made for that

Maybe the problem is with me and because I did something wrong, so I'll explain the process in my own words

I use Windows 11

I downloaded the file "Windows Executable: exiftool-12.65.zip (6.9 MB)"

Unpacked,
opened,
surprised for the first time that I couldn't do or import anything and then the program ended
then I found that I should drag the folder with the images and the Json files to the program icon, the program did something and then quit.

In my previous experiences with such programs, it has always been said that what was supposed to happen happened and everything is finished. but nothing has changed.

then i read i should rename the file with .exe.
did it, tried again, nothing changed.

then I moved the file to "C:\WINDOWS" and tried again, nothing changed
(I wasn't quite sure what was meant by ...move to... (or any other directory in your PATH).

then I loaded the other file which is to install. but again exactly the same as before

what am I doing wrong? I've been sitting here for 3 days to restore the metadata of the images, I have 120 GB worth of images

[StarGeek]

Exiftool is a command line program.  That means you have to open up a CMD window (recommended) or PowerShell windows and run it from there.  The latter has a lot of idiosyncrasies that don't work well with common exiftool commands, so I don't recommend it unless you're very familiar with PS.

My guess is that you actually want to change the FileCreateDate/FileModifyDate, as those are the first things when you right click a file and select properties.

Now, since you mention json files and Google, you need to know that you do not have to copy data from the json files into the originals.  Google does not remove the embedded metadata.  What you want to change is the above mentioned file system time stamps.

Try a command like this
exiftool "-FileCreateDate<DateTimeOriginal" "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" file.jpg

While it is possible to create a drag/drop command with the exiftool icon (see Stand-alone version in the Windows GUI), it will not work when you want to copy from one tag to another, as that needs to use the lesser/greater than symbols </>, which cannot be used as a file name.