Remove Properties function fails on removing location info on photos from Windows Phone

btbt 11,776 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2012-06-04T13:03:07+00:00

On photos taken with smartphones running Windows Phone 7.5, the "remove properties and personal information" feature fails on removing GPS coordinates from the pictures.

After importing the picture to my computer, I right-click the picture in Windows Explorer and go in Properties>Details tab.

I click "remove personal information"

I get an error saying it was unable to remove the property. It fails on all three GPS properties: Latitude, Longitude and Altitude.

Any idea why?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2012-08-07T22:47:32+00:00

    Same exact problem here.

    "Run as administrator" does not help.

    So what now ?

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  2. Anonymous
    2012-08-08T13:29:48+00:00

    I found this link which explains how to change it. The most interesting line in there "Windows Explorer won’t let you edit GPS related information of photographs but Google’s Picasa software is a good choice for doing that."

    http://www.labnol.org/software/exif-data-editors/14210/

    Hope this helps.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-09-01T08:16:55+00:00

    Doesn't matter the source of the image, this is a problem with Windows 7.  There is no solution (other than rebooting my system over to linux or feeding the image through some shady website).  Is anyone from the Windows Dev team looking at this?

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  4. btbt 11,776 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2012-09-01T15:04:01+00:00

    In Windows 8, I still have problems. When attempting to remove properties, I get ask for administrative approval and it fails even after I give approval.

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  5. Anonymous
    2012-11-20T20:13:38+00:00

    In Windows 8, I still have problems. When attempting to remove properties, I get ask for administrative approval and it fails even after I give approval.

    Ditto. I am unable to remove location data on my Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers. When only trying to remove Longitude, I get the following error: "An error occurred when writing the property 'Longitude' to the file 'WP_XYZ.jpg'."

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