Change to a specified date and time. - This will give you a simple dialog box for entering a custom date and time. You enter as much or as little as you know. If you only know the year the file was taken, type in a new year, and select ?? for the month. Elements will carry over the "unknown" flag to the day and time. If you don't even know the year the photo was taken, you can set the year to unknown and the entire date will become unknown. These will be sorted as oldest in the timeline. Later, you can search for these items using Find > Items with Unknown Date or Time.
Change to match file's date and time. - This will change the file to the "Modified on" date and time of the file.
Shift to new starting date and time. - This is useful if you had the date or time on your camera set incorrectly. It lets you adjust the date and time of multiple photos in relation to the oldest photo selected. For example, if you have a batch of photos that dated February 16, 2005 starting at 6 PM and progressing through the evening, but you later realize they were taken on Valentine's day, you can select all the photos, change the date to Feb. 14 (leaving the time alone) and all the photos selected will shift by the same amount (2 days). Another example is if you made a mistake setting the AM/PM setting in your camera, and later realize that for 3 months, you had been taking photos with the time set 12 hours off. Select all the photos taken within that timeframe, shift them forward or back 12 hours, and they'll all be corrected.
Shift by set number of hours (time zone adjust). - This is useful if you have taken a trip outside of your home time zone and don't bother adjusting your camera's time setting. Just choose how many hours you need to adjust ahead or back, and Elements will modify the photo's time. This is another way you could handle the AM/PM mistake described above.
Next Page --> Backing Up Your Photos
