Set Date Taken from File Name

[rewallac]

I have a folder of photos which have the date taken in the file name. How to I set the EXIF date taken from the file name?

2016-10-06_17-59-46.295790.jpg
2016-10-10_17-28-47.765140.jpg
2016-10-17_17-53-49.384150.jpg

YYYY-MM-DD_??-??-??..jpg (Logically it would seem that the format is YYYY-MM-DD_HH-mm however, based on the content the hour/minute does not appear to me to be in the filename. However, I will accept those values as the hour/minute if I have to.

[Phil Harvey]

If you do this:

exiftool "-datetimeoriginal<filename" DIR

then the year, month, day, hour, minute, second will be set from the file name.  (See FAQ 5 for why this works.)

If you want to set the minutes and seconds to zero, you can so this:

exiftool "-datetimeoriginal<${filename;$_=substr($_,0,13)} 00:00" DIR

This is assuming you want to set EXIF DateTimeOriginal.  You could also set CreateDate and/or ModifyDate if you want, or use AllDates (a shortcut tag) to set all three together.

- Phil

[rewallac]

PERFECT!

THANKS PHIL!

[Azertix]

Hello and thanks for your tool
I want to do the same thing but my files are named "IMG-20190907-WA0025" (Whatsapp files).
Is it possible ?

Thank you
Azertix

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Azertix,

That same command should work for you.

- Phil

[Azertix]

Correct, but not for all files, i don't know why 

Code Select Expand

C:\Windows>exiftool "-datetimeoriginal<filename" C:\Temp\Images_a_traiter
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190908-WA0069.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190908-WA0069.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190908-WA0072 - Copie.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190908-WA0072 - Copie.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190908-WA0072.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190908-WA0072.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190911-WA0074.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20190911-WA0074.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191008-WA0070.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191008-WA0070.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191008-WA0071.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191008-WA0071.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191018-WA0061.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191018-WA0061.jpg
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv) - C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191028-WA0067.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Temp/Images_a_traiter/IMG-20191028-WA0067.jpg
    1 directories scanned
   62 image files updated
    8 image files unchanged

I did those 8 files manually 

[StarGeek]

The second command would probably have been better for those you list, as it only takes the first group of numbers.  If all the images included the WA#### format, then some of them probably have hours and minutes also set instead of 00:00:00.

[Phil Harvey]

Yes I was looking at the second command

[Azertix]

Thanks for your replies

[gheppell]

Hello.  I name many of my photos in the following fashion - 'May 10, 2004@13.22.58.jpg'    (without the quotes).  Is there any way to use exiftool to set a given date tag based on the filename as I have described it?  I suspect I will have to parse the filename piece by piece and attach the appropriate text parsed to the appropriate component of the date in the tag.  I can't seem to find the protocol by which I do this however.  Thank you

[StarGeek]

Try this
exiftool -d "%B %d, %Y@%H.%M.%S" "-DateTimeOriginal<${Filename;s/\.[^.]*$//}" <FileOrDir>

The -d (dateFormat) option tells exiftool how to interpret the filename as a date (see Common Date Format Codes).  The ${Filename;s/\.[^.]*$//} strips away the extension so it doesn't have to be dealt with in the date string.

[gheppell]

Thanks very much.  Depending on when I named/renamed the photo, there may or may not be a space after the comma, may or may not be a space before or after the ampersand, etc.  Will the command you suggest allow for these minor differences?  If not, what would a command look like that assumes the following:  1) first three alpha characters in the filename represent Month, 2) the first two numeric characters represent day, 3) the next four numeric characters represent year, and so on for the hours, minutes, seconds.  The order of these items is perfectly consistent in my filenames, just not some of the spacing and use of commas as I detailed above. 

As always, many thanks.

Also, just realized I used May in my example, which is unfortunate in that it happens to only have 3 letters.  For the month, I only use the three character abbreviation. (ie.  Jan for January, Feb, for February.....)


Another follow up:  I set one file to it's full month name and ran the tool as a batch file with the following command:

exiftool -d "%B %d, %Y@%H.%M.%S" "-xmp:createdate<${Filename;s/\.[^.]*$//}" -overwrite_original  "January 31, 2009@13.16.48.JPG"
pause

The output I received back (file path altered) was:

G:\{myfilepath}\Jan>exiftool -d "d, H.S" "-xmp:createdate<${Filename;s/\.[^.]*$//}" -overwrite_original  "January 31, 2009@13.16.48.JPG"
Warning: No writable tags set from January 31, 2009@13.16.48.JPG
    0 image files updated
    1 image files unchanged

G:\{myfilepath}\Jan>pause
Press any key to continue . . .

Regards.

[StarGeek]

may or may not be a space before or after the ampersand, etc.

Ampersand?  Do you mean the At Symbol @, as there isn't an Ampersand & in your example. 

Will the command you suggest allow for these minor differences?

It will allow for minor spacing differences but not if there are spaces where there aren't spaces in the date format string such as around the @ symbol.

1) first three alpha characters in the filename represent Month,

I had assumed from your example, that the full month name was used.  If the month name is abbreviated, then use %b instead.  See Common Date Format Codes.

It's probably easier to tell exiftool to remove all the spaces for this command.  Use this for the filename instead
${Filename;s/\.[^.]*$//;s/ //g}

[Phil Harvey]

StarGeek posted while I was composing this, but here it is anyway...

You should use %b instead of %B for an abbreviate month name.

In a .bat file you must double all "%" characters.  So try this in your .bat file:

exiftool -d "%%B %%d, %%Y@%%H.%%M.%%S" "-xmp:createdate<${Filename;s/\.[^.]*$//;s/^(.{3}).*?(\d+).*?(\d+).*?(\d+).*?(\d+).*?(\d+)/$1 $2, $3\@$4.$5.$6/}" -overwrite_original  %*

Here I have tried to also reformat the date/time to match the -d formatting.

- Phil

[gheppell]

Thank you both very much.  StarGeek, yes I meant the @ symbol, not the ampersand.  My apologies for any confusion.