Using VBA to get extended file attributes

Question

Trying to use Excel VBA to capture all the file attributes from files on disk  including extended attributes  Was able to get it to loop through the files and capture the basic attributes  that come from the file system     File Path File Name File Size Date Created Date Last Accessed Date Last Modified  File Type   Would also like to capture the extended properties that come from the file itself    Author Keywords Comments Last Author Category Subject   And other properties which are visible when right clicking on the file    The goal is to create a detailed list of all the files on a file server

User · Accepted Answer

You say loop    so if you want to do this for a dir instead of the current document   Dim sFile As Variant Dim oShell  Set oShell   CreateObject  Shell Application   Dim oDir    Set oDir   oShell Namespace  c  foo    For Each sFile In oDir Items    Debug Print oDir GetDetailsOf sFile  XXX   Next   Where XXX is an attribute column index  9 for Author for example   To list available indexes for your reference you can replace the for loop with   for i   0 To 40    debug   i  oDir GetDetailsOf oDir Items  i  Next   Quickly for a single file attribute   Const PROP COMPUTER As Long   56  With CreateObject  Shell Application   Namespace  C  HOSTDIRECTORY       MsgBox  GetDetailsOf  Items Item  FILE NAME    PROP COMPUTER  End With

User · Answer

Lucky discovery  if objFolderItem is Nothing when you call  objFolder GetDetailsOf objFolderItem  i    the string returned is the name of the property  rather than its  undefined  value e g  when i 3 it returns  Date modified   Doing it for all 288 values of I makes it clear why most cause it to return blank for most filetypes e g i 175 is  Horizontal resolution

User · Answer

You can get this with  BuiltInDocmementProperties   For example   Public Sub PrintDocumentProperties       Dim oApp As New Excel Application     Dim oWB As Workbook     Set oWB   ActiveWorkbook      Dim title As String     title   oWB BuiltinDocumentProperties  Title        Dim lastauthor As String     lastauthor   oWB BuiltinDocumentProperties  Last Author        Debug Print title     Debug Print lastauthor End Sub   See this page for all the fields you can access with this  http   msdn microsoft com en-us library bb220896 aspx  If you re trying to do this outside of the client  i e  with Excel closed and running code from  say  a  NET program   you need to use DSOFile dll

User · Answer

I was finally able to get this to work for my needs   The old voted up code does not run on windows 10 system  at least not mine   The referenced MS library link below provides current examples on how to make this work  My example uses them with late bindings   https   docs microsoft com en-us windows win32 shell folder-getdetailsof    The attribute codes were different on my computer and like someone mentioned above most return blank values even if they are not  I used a for loop to cycle through all of them and found out that Title and Subject can still be accessed which is more then enough for my purposes   Private Sub MySubNamek   Dim objShell  As Object  Shell Dim objFolder As Object  Folder  Set objShell   CreateObject  Shell Application   Set objFolder   objShell NameSpace  E  MyFolder    If  Not objFolder Is Nothing  Then Dim objFolderItem As Object  FolderItem Set objFolderItem   objFolder ParseName  Myfilename txt           For i   0 To 288            szItem   objFolder GetDetailsOf objFolderItem  i             Debug Print i  amp    -    amp  szItem        Next Set objFolderItem   Nothing End If  Set objFolder   Nothing Set objShell   Nothing End Sub

User · Answer

vb net  Extended file stributes  visual basic  net sample   Dim sFile As Object         Dim oShell   CreateObject  Shell Application           Dim oDir   oShell Namespace  c  temp            For i   0 To 34             TextBox1 Text   TextBox1 Text  amp  oDir GetDetailsOf oDir  i   amp  vbCrLf             For Each sFile In oDir Items                 TextBox1 Text   TextBox1 Text  amp  oDir GetDetailsOf sFile  i   amp  vbCrLf             Next             TextBox1 Text   TextBox1 Text  amp  vbCrLf         Next

[vba] Using VBA to get extended file attributes

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