A maintenance release of Attribute Changer 11.30 is available and can be downloaded free of charge.

It fixes several issues:

· Name filters were not correctly saved when closing the application
· Crash when files or folders stored at the root of a drive had very long names
· Crash when multiple running instances were closed from Windows Taskbar
· Reset action did not delete “Attribute Changer” root key from registry

If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation. Many thanks for your contribution!

In Windows, filenames and paths are historically limited to MAX_PATH which is defined as 260 characters. Windows API calls are therefore also limited to this number of characters. However, there is a way to bypass this limitation by using a special naming convention and to allow a maximum path length of 32767 characters.

Attribute Changer is using the standard Unicode API calls and therefore limited to 260 characters for a complete path and I got feedback from customers that they were not able to modify files with path lengths going beyond these 260 characters.

To resolve this problem, I changed the application to prefix the local file operations with “\\?\” and network operations with “\\?\UNC\”. By adding a prefix, Windows is able to return an extended path length of up to 32767 characters when using Unicode API calls.

More information can be found at Maximum Path Length Limitation

Attribute Changer is now able to process very long file paths with success.

If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation. Many thanks for your contribution!

A maintenance release of Attribute Changer 11.20 is available and can be downloaded free of charge.

It fixes an issue in the reporting window where the ‘Photo – After’ column value did not get updated.

If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation. Many thanks for your contribution!

A maintenance release of Attribute Changer 11.20 is available and can be downloaded free of charge.

It fixes an inter-process communication (IPC) issue when running a shell and portable instance in parallel. The portable instance then used the selected items in Windows Explorer.

In Control Panel / Programs and Features, the correct version information is now registered for customers using software distribution solutions.

If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation. Many thanks for your contribution!

The top most requested feature is finally here … Attribute Changer goes portable !

Attribute Changer 11.20 can now be used in two different ways, either as a shell extension or as a portable application. To use it as a portable application, launch the executable or shortcut from the Start menu.

Then, simply drop your files or folders onto the main window and Attribute Changer will act the same way you know it by using the ‘Change attributes’ context menu entry.

But you can go further … dragging the files while holding the “Control (CTRL)” key will give you access to enhanced features that are also available in the shell extension. You won’t loose any functionality.

After Attribute Changer has finished processing your dropped selection, you can keep the window open and drop another set of files and folders.

Two installers are available, the classic one which installs the whole application with Start menu shortcuts, but you can now choose if you would like to install the shell extension. This gives you the choice to install Attribute Changer as an application that can only be launched from a shortcut and remove the shell integration.

A second installer does only extract the files to a folder of your choice, so it’s a true portable application.

Version 11.20 includes the following enhancements:

· Make Attribute Changer portable
· Saving main window position (portable mode)
· Context menu for attribute checkboxes
· Add option to make Attribute Changer stay in front
· Option to select/deselect shell extension in installer
· Fix EXIF issue with IPTC segment
· Updated user guide

If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation. Many thanks for your contribution!

I’m pleased to announce a new release of Attribute Changer, focusing especially on the detailed logging feature.

· Enhanced JPEG EXIF header detection, supporting more JPEG files
· Rewrite of detailed logging feature
· Natural sort algorithm for detailed logging
· Subdir state saved on exit
· Fixed TAB order for keyboard navigation
· Fixed issue to display all elements in ‘Size’ filter listbox
· Fixed broken mouse wheel scrolling in listboxes
· Fixed issue to disable controls during processing
· Fixed memory hog in processing engine

The detailed logging feature has been completely rewritten and on a test machine with 251000 files and 500 folders, the improvements with an open logging window during processing are impressive:

Time: 200 seconds down to 70 seconds
Memory: 990 MB down to 210 MB

By the way, saving the state of the “Include sub-folders and files” checkbox was removed in version 11 …. I understood your complaints and it’s back 🙂

If you find this program useful, please consider making a donation. Many thanks for your contribution!