Understanding the “No EXIF Date” Options
When PhotoMove scans your folders, it looks for the internal EXIF Creation Date—the exact timestamp your digital camera or smartphone embedded inside the file the exact fraction of a second you snapped the picture.
However, you will inevitably have files that are missing this internal camera data. These usually include:
- Photos downloaded from Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp (social media platforms strip EXIF data to save space and protect privacy).
- Old printed photos you scanned with a flatbed scanner.
- Screenshots or digital drawings.
- Images or Videos recorded on older digital cameras or phones.
Because these files don’t have a reliable internal camera date, PhotoMove needs to know what you want to do with them. You have two options in the interface:
Option 1: Use File Date to Move or Copy to Structured Folders
If you check this box, PhotoMove will fall back to the computer’s file dates to sort the photo into your chosen Year/Month/Day folder structure (Note: This is a Pro feature).
💡 How PhotoMove handles this smartly: Very often, a file’s “Date created” is just the day it was copied or downloaded to this drive, while “Date modified” still holds an older date. The opposite also happens: if you edit or re-save a photo, Date modified becomes later than Date created. Because of this, PhotoMove uses whichever of Date created and Date modified is earlier.
When PhotoMove finds a photo or video with no usable EXIF date, checking this box tells it to take that earlier file date and sort the file into the correct year, month, and day folders based on that value.
Option 2: Copy or Move to This Folder
If you check this box instead, PhotoMove will send all files missing EXIF data into one specific “catch-all” folder of your choosing.
Why use this option? This acts as a quarantine. It keeps your chronologically date-sorted photo library perfectly clean, while gathering all your screenshots, memes, and downloaded social media photos into one single folder so you can easily review and organize them manually later.
What happens if I leave both unchecked?
If neither box is checked, PhotoMove will completely ignore any files missing an EXIF date. It will leave them exactly where they currently are and will not copy or move them.
Update (August 2026): PhotoMove no longer always uses the Modified Date for files without EXIF. It now uses whichever of Windows Date created and Date modified is earlier—the same rule for Use File Date sorting and for writing that date into EXIF (Pro). The help copy above reflects this.
Hi J,
Great question! You hit the nail on the head regarding how Windows handles file dates. Very often, the “Creation Date” just reflects the day the file was copied or downloaded to your current hard drive, while the “Modified Date” retains the actual historical date the file was saved.
Because of this exact issue, PhotoMove is hard-coded to always use the Modified Date.
To use this feature, simply check the option to use the file date for files without EXIF data in the PhotoMove interface (this is a Pro feature). When the program encounters a photo or video with stripped EXIF data, it will automatically grab that Modified Date and sort the file into the correct year, month, and day folders based on that value.
Hope this helps!
If no EXIF date is available, but both Creation Date and Modified Date are avaialble, which does it use? Creation date, looking at some I have, is near todays date, but modified date looks to be the correct date the photos were taken. How do you specify PhotoMove to use the Modified date?