How to search for Explorer files that are read-only

KeithHoward said:

Finally, thanks again to everyone for an enlightening (albeit slightly sparky at times...:) discussion.
Keith

Keith,
lol as predicted & those sparks are nothing (spent many years on Usenet in the 80's ;O)
Good luck with whatever program one chooses to use. The free Commander would have very easily found the files in this case, but of course Filelocator Pro is far more advanced, the devs there have done a great job (and take a look at their client list).

Am hoping you will enjoy your choice (Agent Ransack here for home, and Filelocator Pro for work, 100% reliable, 0% problems). As it's got many supporters\users among forum members, it was reading some of the recommendations here that 1st made me aware of it's existence some years ago, so many thanks to the forum for providing valuable info.

One could easily make money just GUI-ing those pesky "user-friendly" parameters into a little tool. I'd pay for such a tool instead of using this... Pascaline-style method or even instead of any bloaty Commander.
But then again, this would be an appropriate occasion for Mark Russinovich (to whom I'm a fan) to step in and make a tool like only he knows to make.
Oh, I almost forgot: with 4 attributes you'd have to use 8 combinations

Although not GUIs, Windows does come with tools fit for the task of listing files with certain file attributes. Those tools are the Command Prompt, and PowerShell.

As Ztruker describes in post 2, the below Command Prompt command will list all files and folders with the Read-only attribute set,

Code:

dir /a:r * /b

Add the '/s' switch to recurse the search into subdirectories. For a PowerShell line that does similar,

Code:

Get-ChildItem | ?{$_.Attributes -bAnd 1} | select -Expand FullName

Add the '-Recurse' switch to find Read-only items in subdirectories.

Kari said:

A normal user usually uses only 4 attributes: Read Only, System, Hidden and Archive. You can search any combinations of these with attributes:X using logical operator OR.

mireazma said:

With 4 attributes you'd have to use 8 combinations

Yep, that means you'd have to type "attributes:X" 8 times into the Explorer search to find Read-only items—and that's if there were 4 attributes—imagine how many times you'd have to type "attributes:X" to consider all 14 of Windows 7's file attributes... there'd be (1/2)*2^14 = 8192 combinations!

And I believe Windows 8 adds 2 new file attributes for a total of 16 unique attributes (in which there are a whopping 32768 combinations that contain Read-only). To list all file attributes on your computer, run the below PowerShell line,

Code:

[enum]::GetValues([IO.FileAttributes])

For their values as well, enter the below line,

Code:

[enum]::GetValues([IO.FileAttributes]) | select @{l='Name';e={$_}}, Value__ | ft @{l='Attribute';e={$_.Name};a='l'}, @{l='Value';e={$_.Value__};a='r'} -a

The output of the above on my Windows 8.1 Pro PC reads,

Code:

Attribute          Value
---------          -----
ReadOnly               1
Hidden                 2
System                 4
Directory             16
Archive               32
Device                64
Normal               128
Temporary            256
SparseFile           512
ReparsePoint        1024
Compressed          2048
Offline             4096
NotContentIndexed   8192
Encrypted          16384
IntegrityStream    32768
NoScrubData       131072