How to Import iPhone Images and Videos to Windows 10 Keeping Original Folder & File Names

How to Import iPhone or iPad Images and Videos to Windows 10 Keeping Original Folder & File Names

This article is about Importing iPhone Images & Videos to Windows 10 with Original Folder & File Names, quickly and easily!

This is the easiest & quickest method and requires no apps or tools or anything complicated. It’s actually very easy.

I was struggling with this for years. Because I am a PC user and I want to transfer, store and backup my photos and videos to my Windows computer.

This method actually is built into Windows 10, but also works on Windows 7.

Step 1

Connect your iPhone/iDevice to your PC by plugging in the USB cable from the iDevice to a PC USB Port.

Step 2

Using File Explorer, where you see “This PC” and other devices and hard drives, you will see the Apple iPhone (or Apple iPad, iPod or other iDevices).

Step 3

Right-click and select the ‘import pictures and videos’ option.

A screen will show up. Make sure that ‘Import all new items now’ is selected. Then select “More option” at the bottom.

Step 4

The More options import settings window contains various very important settings for how the import functionality will work.

You can configure this any way you like, but if you are like me, you probably want to keep the original iPhone folder structure and file names, to ensure things are organized and named the same way as on the iDevice internal storage file. This is good if you have made other imports and backups in the past, and want to use the same folder structure.

Before doing the settings, I manually created a folder on my hard drive where I would import the content.

(The final goal so when all the steps below are completed and when pictures and videos have been imported, this is an example of the kind of folder structure you should get):

Step 5

Assuming you DON’T want to import the images and videos to the default selected “Pictures” and “Videos” folders in Windows 10, but to a custom folder on any hard drive location like in Step 4. The settings you want if you want to keep the original iPhone internal storage folder and file names, you want to use settings similar to these:

Step 6

As in the example above, select the hard drive/folder you want the images and videos to be stored, by selecting Browse… and selecting the location/folder you want. These will be different than in my example above clearly. Do this for both images and videos. Assuming you want to store videos and images into the same original folder structure as on the iPhone, so I select the same folder for both images and videos as seen here above.

To keep the original internal storage folders and file names, the important settings for the the other options are, as seen above:

• Folder name: (None)
• File name: Original file Name (Preserve Folders)

In my experience, I don’t want Windows to ‘Rotate my pictures after import’ so I make sure that is NOT selected.

I also don’t want to delete the photos and images from my iPhone, at least not right now, so I make sure that ‘Delete files from device after importing’ is NOT selected.

When you are finished with the settings, press ‘OK’.

Step 7

Press ‘Import’.

The images and videos will now be imported with the original folder and file names as on the iPhone. In my case, on the S: drive and in a folder I created there:

If you have thousands of images and videos like I had, this can take a while.

All photos and videos should now have been imported!

I hope this guide helped you. I wrote this post as I wanted to share the solution to this problem for others.

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