What options are available for Shell32.Folder.GetDetailsOf(..,..)?

Question

I've seen answers using GetDetailsOf() to get details about shell items, but the numbers are always magic numbers.

I've looked at the docs for both FolderItem and GetDetailsOf but found nothing. (The list in the latter is not for everything. They don't cover "Description", "Authors", nor the recycle bin delete date...)

Is there some method that will return the possible options for an item? Is it listed somewhere?

Omeromero

These aren't .NET methods, they are COM scripting methods – Prohibition

Not sure this will help archive.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack You have seen this? #220597 – Mennonite

@Blam While I want to avoid the additional dependency of Windows API Codepack, the second link seems very helpful. I don't know how I didn't see it when searching. Thanks. – Omeromero

@HansPassant Thanks. But it must be documented somewhere. Or not? (What I meant about a method is some method that would return something like a list of int's that can be used.) – Omeromero

@Omeromero - what's your language? With the Shell script interface, you won't go too far. – Vardar

Please post what you find out as I am having the same problem. You take for granted that any collection in .NET implements IEnumerable. I find it very confusing that you go to the folder to get the properties. – Mennonite

@SimonMourier C#. It was in the tags. But someone removed it. – Omeromero

@Blam IEnumerable - ?? I didn't mention that. About your other point - I don't want the simple properties that can be retrieved using FolderInfo - I want those that can't. – Omeromero

Why are you getting snippy with me? No I mentioned IEnumerable. From the link I provided it was not clear I knew what properties you meant? The point it that is it not a .NET collection so you don't have the convenience of IEnumerable. – Mennonite

The language plays no role as we are talking about the functions mentioned are COM interfaces and classes that are part of the Windows Shell. Accessing it is the same from all languages. Anyway, Shell extensions can add new folder types with their own columns. In fact, the Printers folder, Recycle Bin etc are "just" another extension. Anyway, the Windows Property system is described here with a very extensive reference, including the ways you register new properties or ask a shell item for a specific property. – Prohibition

@Blam Sorry. I didn't mean it that way at all! I just didn't understand what you meant and therefore asked. That's all. Anyway, I am grateful for your comment above. – Omeromero

@PanagiotisKanavos Thank you very much for the link. That is very helpful. (Still looking for the equivalent link for the recycle bin etc.) You can transform that into an answer. – Omeromero

@PanagiotisKanavos - There are many ways to access the Shell API and the language somehow plays a role in the sense that 1) some Shell interfaces target Scripting languages (like FolderItem), others don't (IShellFolder), and 2) in .NET you don't have access to a TLB that helps programming the Shell (best shot is the Windows API Code Pack mentioned by Blam). In C++, it's somehow much easier to program the Shell. – Vardar

Answer 1

I figured this out by accident. If you pass null into GetDetailsOf then it responds with the column names. For example, execute the following JScript with cscript:

var shellapp = WScript.CreateObject("Shell.Application");
var folder = shellapp.NameSpace("D:\\");
for (var j = 0; j < 0xFFFF; j++) {
    detail = folder.GetDetailsOf(null, j);
    if (!detail) {
        break;
    }
    WScript.Echo("[" + j + "] = " + detail);
}

On my Windows 10 system this outputs:

[0] = Name
[1] = Size
[2] = Item type
[3] = Date modified
[4] = Date created
[5] = Date accessed
[6] = Attributes
[7] = Offline status
[8] = Availability
[9] = Perceived type
[10] = Owner
[11] = Kind
[12] = Date taken
[13] = Contributing artists
[14] = Album
[15] = Year
[16] = Genre
[17] = Conductors
[18] = Tags
[19] = Rating
[20] = Authors
[21] = Title
[22] = Subject
[23] = Categories
[24] = Comments
[25] = Copyright
[26] = #
[27] = Length
[28] = Bit rate
[29] = Protected
[30] = Camera model
[31] = Dimensions
[32] = Camera maker
[33] = Company
[34] = File description
[35] = Program name
[36] = Duration
[37] = Is online
[38] = Is recurring
[39] = Location
[40] = Optional attendee addresses
[41] = Optional attendees
[42] = Organizer address
[43] = Organizer name
[44] = Reminder time
[45] = Required attendee addresses
[46] = Required attendees
[47] = Resources
[48] = Meeting status
[49] = Free/busy status
[50] = Total size
[51] = Account name

And this is quite different from Windows 2000 as detailed from Retrieving Extended File Properties. Incidentally if you pass in a different NameSpace then you're going to get different attributes. In my example, I'm asking what attributes are available for files on drive D: which could be different depending on its format.

Verlaverlee

Answer 2

There are more than 300 columns from my Windows 10 testing. PowerShell code:

$objFolder = (New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application).Namespace('c:\')
for ($columnNumber = 0; $columnNumber -lt 500; ++$columnNumber) 
{ 
    $columnName = $objFolder.GetDetailsOf($objFolder.Items, $columnNumber) 
    if ($columnName)
    {
        Write-Output "$(([string]$columnNumber).PadLeft(3)) $columnName"
    }
}

English column names:

  0 Name
  1 Size
  2 Item type
  3 Date modified
  4 Date created
  5 Date accessed
  6 Attributes
  7 Offline status
  8 Availability
  9 Perceived type
 10 Owner
 11 Kind
 12 Date taken
 13 Contributing artists
 14 Album
 15 Year
 16 Genre
 17 Conductors
 18 Tags
 19 Rating
 20 Authors
 21 Title
 22 Subject
 23 Categories
 24 Comments
 25 Copyright
 26 #
 27 Length
 28 Bit rate
 29 Protected
 30 Camera model
 31 Dimensions
 32 Camera maker
 33 Company
 34 File description
 35 Masters keywords
 36 Masters keywords
 42 Program name
 43 Duration
 44 Is online
 45 Is recurring
 46 Location
 47 Optional attendee addresses
 48 Optional attendees
 49 Organizer address
 50 Organizer name
 51 Reminder time
 52 Required attendee addresses
 53 Required attendees
 54 Resources
 55 Meeting status
 56 Free/busy status
 57 Total size
 58 Account name
 60 Task status
 61 Computer
 62 Anniversary
 63 Assistant's name
 64 Assistant's phone
 65 Birthday
 66 Business address
 67 Business city
 68 Business country/region
 69 Business P.O. box
 70 Business postal code
 71 Business state or province
 72 Business street
 73 Business fax
 74 Business home page
 75 Business phone
 76 Callback number
 77 Car phone
 78 Children
 79 Company main phone
 80 Department
 81 E-mail address
 82 E-mail2
 83 E-mail3
 84 E-mail list
 85 E-mail display name
 86 File as
 87 First name
 88 Full name
 89 Gender
 90 Given name
 91 Hobbies
 92 Home address
 93 Home city
 94 Home country/region
 95 Home P.O. box
 96 Home postal code
 97 Home state or province
 98 Home street
 99 Home fax
100 Home phone
101 IM addresses
102 Initials
103 Job title
104 Label
105 Last name
106 Mailing address
107 Middle name
108 Cell phone
109 Nickname
110 Office location
111 Other address
112 Other city
113 Other country/region
114 Other P.O. box
115 Other postal code
116 Other state or province
117 Other street
118 Pager
119 Personal title
120 City
121 Country/region
122 P.O. box
123 Postal code
124 State or province
125 Street
126 Primary e-mail
127 Primary phone
128 Profession
129 Spouse/Partner
130 Suffix
131 TTY/TTD phone
132 Telex
133 Webpage
134 Content status
135 Content type
136 Date acquired
137 Date archived
138 Date completed
139 Device category
140 Connected
141 Discovery method
142 Friendly name
143 Local computer
144 Manufacturer
145 Model
146 Paired
147 Classification
148 Status
149 Status
150 Client ID
151 Contributors
152 Content created
153 Last printed
154 Date last saved
155 Division
156 Document ID
157 Pages
158 Slides
159 Total editing time
160 Word count
161 Due date
162 End date
163 File count
164 File extension
165 Filename
166 File version
167 Flag color
168 Flag status
169 Space free
172 Group
173 Sharing type
174 Bit depth
175 Horizontal resolution
176 Width
177 Vertical resolution
178 Height
179 Importance
180 Is attachment
181 Is deleted
182 Encryption status
183 Has flag
184 Is completed
185 Incomplete
186 Read status
187 Shared
188 Creators
189 Date
190 Folder name
191 Folder path
192 Folder
193 Participants
194 Path
195 By location
196 Type
197 Contact names
198 Entry type
199 Language
200 Date visited
201 Description
202 Link status
203 Link target
204 URL
208 Media created
209 Date released
210 Encoded by
211 Episode number
212 Producers
213 Publisher
214 Season number
215 Subtitle
216 User web URL
217 Writers
219 Attachments
220 Bcc addresses
221 Bcc
222 Cc addresses
223 Cc
224 Conversation ID
225 Date received
226 Date sent
227 From addresses
228 From
229 Has attachments
230 Sender address
231 Sender name
232 Store
233 To addresses
234 To do title
235 To
236 Mileage
237 Album artist
238 Sort album artist
239 Album ID
240 Sort album
241 Sort contributing artists
242 Beats-per-minute
243 Composers
244 Sort composer
245 Disc
246 Initial key
247 Part of a compilation
248 Mood
249 Part of set
250 Period
251 Color
252 Parental rating
253 Parental rating reason
254 Space used
255 EXIF version
256 Event
257 Exposure bias
258 Exposure program
259 Exposure time
260 F-stop
261 Flash mode
262 Focal length
263 35mm focal length
264 ISO speed
265 Lens maker
266 Lens model
267 Light source
268 Max aperture
269 Metering mode
270 Orientation
271 People
272 Program mode
273 Saturation
274 Subject distance
275 White balance
276 Priority
277 Project
278 Channel number
279 Episode name
280 Closed captioning
281 Rerun
282 SAP
283 Broadcast date
284 Program description
285 Recording time
286 Station call sign
287 Station name
288 Summary
289 Snippets
290 Auto summary
291 Relevance
292 File ownership
293 Sensitivity
294 Shared with
295 Sharing status
297 Product name
298 Product version
299 Support link
300 Source
301 Start date
302 Sharing
303 Availability status
304 Status
305 Billing information
306 Complete
307 Task owner
308 Sort title
309 Total file size
310 Legal trademarks
311 Video compression
312 Directors
313 Data rate
314 Frame height
315 Frame rate
316 Frame width
317 Spherical
318 Stereo
319 Video orientation
320 Total bitrate

Dragonet

Answer 3

A VBA function do the job. Microsoft Scripting Runtime and Microsoft Shell Controls And Automation needed

Function Propriétés(Chemin As String, Fichier As String)
    'Chemin représente le chemin du dossier où se trouve le fichier MP3
    'Fichier représente le nom du fichier mp3 avec l'extension
    Dim Shl As New Shell32.Shell
    Dim Rep As Shell32.Folder
    Dim fich As Shell32.FolderItem

    Dim aPropName() As String, i As Integer
    Set Shl = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
    Set Rep = Shl.Namespace(Chemin)
    Set fich = Rep.Items.Item(Fichier)
    For i = 0 To 1000
        ReDim Preserve aPropName(i)
        aPropName(i) = Format(i, "000 : ") & Rep.GetDetailsOf(Null, i)
        If Len(Rep.GetDetailsOf(Null, i)) = 0 Then
            ReDim Preserve aPropName(i - 1)
            Exit For
        End If
    Next
    ' Create ouput file
    Dim Fso, MyFile
    Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    Set MyFile = Fso.CreateTextFile(Chemin & "\Prop Liste - " & Fichier & ".txt", True)
    MyFile.Write Join(aPropName, Chr(13))
    MyFile.Close
    Set Fso = Nothing
    Set MyFile = Nothing
    Propriétés = aPropName

    Set Shl = Nothing
    Set Rep = Nothing
    Set fich = Nothing
End Function

Brink

Welcome to Stack Overflow! Generally, answers are much more helpful if they include an explanation of what the code is intended to do, and why that solves the problem without introducing others. – Aiden

Answer 4

Perfect, this Get-Metadataflags allowed me to get the index for File Version and avoid locatization issues as in PT-BR it would be 'Versão do Arquivo' which is terrible to retrive programatically. Which led me to derive another function from Technet Get-FileMetadata (https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Get-FileMetaData-3a7ddea7) and by finding it's index (166 for PT-BR) I've came up with this function that returns the file version as string:

Function Get-FileVersion
{ 
    <# 
    .SYNOPSIS 
        Get-FileVersion returns metadata version information about a single file. 

    .DESCRIPTION 
        This function will return file version (or another specific attribute based on index) information about a specific file.
        It can be used to access the information stored in the filesystem. 
        Based on: Get-FileMetadata https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Get-FileMetaData-3a7ddea7
        and Get-FileMetadataFlags https://mcmap.net/q/472838/-what-options-are-available-for-shell32-folder-getdetailsof/62279888#62279888
                
    .EXAMPLE 
        Get-FileVersion -File "c:\temp\image.jpg" 
        Get information about an image file. 
    #> 

    param([Parameter(Mandatory=$True)][string]$File = $(throw "Parameter -File is required.")) 

    $index = 166 #File version index (PT-BR) from Get-FileMetadataFlags (see description)

    if(!(Test-Path -Path $File)) 
    { 
        throw "File does not exist: $File" 
        Exit 1 
    } 

    $tmp = Get-ChildItem $File 
    $pathname = $tmp.DirectoryName 
    $filename = $tmp.Name 

    $shellobj = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application 
    $folderobj = $shellobj.namespace($pathname) 
    $fileobj = $folderobj.parsename($filename) 
    
    if($folderobj.getDetailsOf($folderobj, $index) -and $folderobj.getDetailsOf($fileobj, $index))  
    { 
        $results = $($folderobj.getDetailsOf($fileobj, $index))
    } 
     
    $results 
} #function Get-FileVersion

Cheers!

Abm