is there a way to change attributes of all files at the sametime in the desktop using the command prompt

Question

I have a hidden file in my desktop that I recently switch to attrib +h in command prompt but don't know the name of the file. So I want to use the command prompt and change all files within the desktop to attrib -h. is it possible to do this to all files at the same time?

Answer 1

You didn't specify which OS you're using, but good guesses would be DOS, or any Windows system using the command prompt. (Linux has a sort of similar command, but it operates on different attributes, and linux hides files in a different manner anyways) (Ah, 'desktop' ... so Windows using command prompt...)

you could just type 'attrib *.*' and it'll display the attributes of ALL the files in the subdirectory, look for the one with H...

attrib *.*

You'd probably want to pipe the output through 'more' to see it page by page:

attrib *.* | more

OR

dir /a

and its paged version:

dir /a /p

which shows ALL the files in a subdir, hidden, system, read-only and archive... shows them all, regardless of the attribute flags. Look for the one you don't see with a typical 'dir' command

Once you find the naughty file, then use the attrib -h command to reset the hidden flag:

attrib -h myfile.xls

But if you're dead set on touching all the files, then

attrib -h *.*

would remove the hidden attribute on all files in the subdirectory. Not recommended since it could unhide files you shouldn't be playing with.