Using VBA to get extended file attributes - vba

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.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

'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 & oDir.GetDetailsOf(oDir, i) & vbCrLf
For Each sFile In oDir.Items
TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & oDir.GetDetailsOf(sFile, i) & vbCrLf
Next
TextBox1.Text = TextBox1.Text & vbCrLf
Next

Answer 4

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://learn.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 & " - " & szItem
Next
Set objFolderItem = Nothing
End If
Set objFolder = Nothing
Set objShell = Nothing
End Sub

Answer 5

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"