To compare the permissions on two directory structures with similar contents: icacls path\to\folder1\*. /t > perms1.txt icacls path\to\folder2\*. /t > perms2.txt This assumes that folder1 and folder2 have a similar folder structure, but maybe different file contents, e.g. if folder2 is an older copy of folder1 restored from backups. The idiom "*." matches file/folder names that do not contain a dot, unless it is a leading dot. (e.g. a folder named ".git" will be matched, a folder named "dirname.ext" will not be matched, a file named "filewithnoext" will be matched.) So, it's not perfect, but in most cases it will get most of the folders and exclude most of the files.