Why are imported pictures NOT in chronological order?

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Level 1

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Why are imported pictures NOT in chronological order?

I have an iPhone XR. My wife has an iPhone 13. We recently returned from a fabulous trip to Iceland with great pictures. When I import my pictures into Photos (v.7), my pictures display in the proper chronological order as they appear on my iPhone. However, my wife's pictures do not. Both phones are using the correct day/time setting from Apple.com. My laptop is a MacBook Air running macOS 12.6 (Monterey). And I'm using iCloud as backup storage for photos.

This is driving me nuts! Why can't I put all my pictures in proper chronological order? Please help! Thanks in advance.

Posted on Nov 22, 2022 10:27 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Richard.Taylor

Level 6

10,848 points

Nov 22, 2022 10:57 AM in response to Vandes

Usually this is a time zone problem-- makes sense after you're back from a trip. You may have to select the pictures that are off and use Image>Adjust Date and Time to correct the ones that differ. With a bunch of pictures selected, when you adjust the first one, then the others will also adjust accordingly, keeping the same difference from each other.

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Answer 2

Vandes Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 22, 2022 11:38 AM in response to Richard.Taylor

Thanks for the reply. The time on each photo seems to be correct, yet the pictures themselves don't display within Photos in their proper chronological order. For example, I have a string of pictures taken at 1:15pm, followed by another series of pictures taken at 9:30am of the same day. The "View-menu -> Sort" suggestion (above) does not help. In fact, it's greyed out with "Keep ordered by oldest capture date" selected and cannot be un-selected. And I tried selecting a few images to change their time & date settings, but that still did not work.

Any suggestions?

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Answer 3

Vandes Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 22, 2022 12:49 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

You are correct! It was the time zone on my wife's pictures that was causing them to not display in their proper order. I selected some of her shots, clicked "Command+I" to open image info. By double clicking on the date/time, a new window opens showing not just date and time, but also the time zone setting when the picture was taken. I changed it from East coast to Iceland, then changed the time back 5 hours. The pictures are now in their proper order. Whew! I can rest easy.

Thank you for the help!

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Answer 4

Yer_Man

Level 10

164,010 points

Nov 22, 2022 10:44 AM in response to Vandes

View Menu -> Sort...

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Answer 5

Nov 22, 2022 12:05 PM in response to Vandes

Sort by oldest first, etc, works in Album view, not when you look at the Library. Put the pictures in an album if you want to sort them.

Of course, that won't help, since your times are off. Again, it's probably connected with time zones. One thing that could happen is that one camera is set to local time by changing the hour, and another camera is changed by altering the time zone. Looks the same, but isn't to the computer. (I don't mean that's exactly what happened to you-- but it's a good example.) You indicate a 5 hour difference in times-- just about the difference between Iceland and the East Coast.

I don't understand "I tried selecting a few images to change their time & date settings, but that still did not work." Did the time not change?

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Answer 6

Nov 22, 2022 1:00 PM in response to Vandes

Glad that helped!

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Why are imported pictures NOT in chronological order?

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