Attributes Property

  • Article

This page is specific to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Language Reference for Office 2010.

Description

Sets or returns the attributes of files or folders. Read/write or read-only, depending on the attribute.

Syntax

object.Attributes [= newattributes]

The Attributes property has these parts:

Part

Description

object

Required. Always the name of a File or Folder object.

newattributes

Optional. If provided, newattributes is the new value for the attributes of the specified object.

Settings

The newattributes argument can have any of the following values or any logical combination of the following values:

Constant

Value

Description

Normal

0

Normal file. No attributes are set.

ReadOnly

1

Read-only file. Attribute is read/write.

Hidden

2

Hidden file. Attribute is read/write.

System

4

System file. Attribute is read/write.

Volume

8

Disk drive volume label. Attribute is read-only.

Directory

16

Folder or directory. Attribute is read-only.

Archive

32

File has changed since last backup. Attribute is read/write.

Alias

64

Link or shortcut. Attribute is read-only.

Compressed

128

Compressed file. Attribute is read-only.

Remarks

The following code illustrates the use of the Attributes property with a file:

Sub SetClearArchiveBit(filespec)
    Dim fs, f, r
    Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    Set f = fs.GetFile(fs.GetFileName(filespec))
    If f.attributes and 32 Then
        r = MsgBox("The Archive bit is set, do you want to clear it?", vbYesNo, "Set/Clear Archive Bit")
        If r = vbYes Then 
            f.attributes = f.attributes - 32
            MsgBox "Archive bit is cleared."
        Else
            MsgBox "Archive bit remains set."
        End If
    Else
        r = MsgBox("The Archive bit is not set. Do you want to set it?", vbYesNo, "Set/Clear Archive Bit")
        If r = vbYes Then 
f.attributes = f.attributes + 32
            MsgBox "Archive bit is set."
        Else
            MsgBox "Archive bit remains clear."
        End If
    End If
End Sub