Appdata restore Attributes

Question

Hi, I accidently clicked on the read only box on the Appdata folder, and I reclicked again afterwards. However I noticed that some of my games are unable to access save files now. Is there a way for my to restore the attributes of the folder and its subfolders to what they were previously? Does restoring to a previous version restore it's attributes as well?

Answer 1

AppData is NOT read-only. The folder CAN'T be read-only.

You can make the files within the folder (and files within subfolders) read-only, but that would break the functioning of your applications.

Answer 2

The AppData folder is normally hidden for good reasons.

When you accidentally clicked the "read-only" box on the Properties dialog for the AppData folder, nothing would have happened until you did something with the following dialog:

So what did you accidentally do here?  Did you click OK or Cancel?  Did you leave the selection at "Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files" or did you change it to "Apply changes to this folder only?

Also, notice what the warning says (emphasis added):  "You have chosen to make the following attribute changes: unset read-only."

That means that you would have removed the read-only attribute from any objects in the AppData folder -- if any had been set, which likely they had not.

So let's assume that instead of just accidentally clicking on the read-only box of the AppData folder's properties, you actually clicked it twice, so that a check appeared in the box.

And then you clicked OK (or Apply).

And then you left the selection button at "Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files."

And then you ignored the warning that said (emphasis added):  "You have chosen to make the following attribute changes: set read-only."

And then you clicked OK.

At this point, all of the files in all of the folders under AppData became read-only, which probably is the reason some of your games are unable to save (if you're really having a problem accessing previously-saved files, the read-only attribute may not be the cause of your problem)

To reverse the read-only settings, just go back to the AppData folder Properties screen, click the "read-only" box once to make sure that it is clear (empty), leave the radio button set to "Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files," confirm that the warning message says, "You have chosen to make the following attribute changes: unset read-only" and click OK.

You have now removed the read-only attribute from all of the files in all of the folders under AppData.  You can confirm this by going to one or more of those files in one or more of those folders, opening its Properties dialog, and looking -- but not touching -- the read-only box.  Do not bother looking at the read-only box for any folders in the AppData folder.  Those filled-in boxes do not mean what you think they mean.

Answer 3

Yes I was trying to change the attributes of a different folder when I noticed what happened. Is the appdata folder normally not set to read only?