Scanned photos show the wrong date? How to fix it

The box from the attic is scanned: four hundred prints, a long evening's work. You open the folder on your phone and your parents' wedding from 1962 sits between last Tuesday's shopping list and a photo of the dog. Every scan carries the same date, the day you scanned it. The photos are in. The years are gone.

The short answer

A scanner makes a new file, and the only date it can give that file is today. To make scans sort by the year the photo was taken, you write that year into the file yourself, in the field called Date taken (for the technically minded: EXIF DateTimeOriginal). Phones, computers and photo apps sort by that field. Windows, Photos on a Mac, the iPhone and Google Photos can all change it. First decide the date, then write it in, then check.

Step 1: decide the date

You rarely know the exact day, and you rarely need it. A year, or a year and a season, is enough to put a photo in its place. Where to look:

• The back of the print. A pencil note, a name, the stamp of a photographer. Some photo labs printed the month and year on the border or the back.
• The album. Prints on the same album page or in the same envelope are often from the same months. Date one, and you have a range for the others.
• What is in the photo. Clothes, hairstyles, cars, the house before or after the new kitchen, a child whose birth year you know. Read how to date an old photograph and find out who is in it.
• The family. Show the photo to whoever is oldest. "That was the summer before your uncle left" is a date.

For photos where you only know the year, choose one rule, for example 1 July of that year, and use it every time. Then write the estimate where people will see it, in the file name or the description: "about 1962".

Step 2: write the date into the file

Before you change anything, work on a copy of your scans or make sure you have a backup.

Where	How	Good to know
Windows	Right click the file, choose Properties, then the Details tab. Click the value next to Date taken, change it and choose OK.	Works for JPEG files. Select several files first to give them all the same date at once.
Mac, Photos app	Select the photos, then choose Image, Adjust Date and Time.	This changes the date in your Photos library. If you export the photos, check that the files carry the new date.
iPhone or iPad	Open the photo, swipe up or tap the (i), then tap Adjust.	The new date is used in your Photos library and its albums.
Google Photos	Open the photo, swipe up or open the info, and tap the pencil next to the date.	Google says a downloaded or shared copy may still show the original date. Put the year in the file name as well.
A whole folder	digiKam, a free photo manager for Windows, Mac and Linux, has a tool to adjust the date of many photos at once. ExifTool, a free command line program, does the same.	If a command line is new to you, digiKam is the easier start.

With ExifTool, this line gives every photo in the folder Scans 1962 the date 1 July 1962: exiftool -AllDates="1962:07:01 12:00:00" "Scans 1962". ExifTool keeps a copy of each original file, with _original added to the name, so you can go back.

Step 3: check that it worked

Changing dates is easy to get slightly wrong: one photo skipped, one year typed as 1926 instead of 1962. Drag the folder onto thememorypalace.ai/timeline. Your browser reads only the date inside each file and shows how many photos you have per year. If the scans still pile up in the year you scanned them, or are counted as photos without a date, the new date did not reach the file. Nothing is uploaded, and you do not need an account.

The same view shows the years with no photo at all. Once the scans are in their place, an empty run of years often points to a box that is still with someone else in the family.

What this does not do

• A date in the file is not proof. The field was made for the exact moment a camera took a picture. When you fill it in yourself, it holds your best estimate, and nothing in the field says so. Keep the word "about" in the file name or the description.
• Not every app keeps it. Messaging apps and some websites strip information from photos, so a scan sent through a chat app may arrive with today's date again. A file name that starts with the year, such as 1962_wedding_Rosa_and_Jan.jpg, keeps the year when the rest is lost.
• Changing the date changes the file. The modified date of the file becomes today, which is normal. Keep the untouched scans as a backup, in case a program makes a mistake.

Then the photo has a place

A scan with the right year is a photo you can find again. A scan with the right year and a name under it is one your grandchildren can understand. In The Memory Palace every photo gets its year, the people in it and the story that goes with it, in a room the family can walk through together. Looking for the date of a single digital photo instead? Start with when was this photo taken.