How do you use gpg4win from command line to encrypt or decrypt a file?

I have Windows 7. (Not Windows 10 so I don't have the fancy native "Windows Services for Unix" that Windows 10 apparently has)

How do you use gpg4win from command line to encrypt or decrypt a file?

I saw a video on youtube that mentioned that on linux you can do gpg -c blah.txt then enter a password when prompted, and it encrypts the file, and gpg blah.gpg to decrypt it.

I ran gpg4win and it installs this thing called Kleopatra which is a GUI program and has a button for encrypt and a button for decrypt, and for encryption I untick "sign as" and tick "encrypt with password", and that encryption works, and decryption works.

But I want to be able to do it from command line too.

I looked where gpg4win installed, and I can't see a gpg.exe

C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\bin>dir gpg*
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 4645-5DCE

 Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\bin

04/09/2020  13:37            34,304 gpg-error.exe
04/09/2020  13:46           398,848 gpgex.dll
04/09/2020  13:47            77,824 gpgme-json.exe
04/09/2020  13:47            16,896 gpgme-w32spawn.exe
04/09/2020  13:50         2,632,704 gpgol.dll
04/09/2020  13:52           260,608 gpgolconfig.exe
04/09/2020  13:52           244,736 gpgolkeyadder.exe
               7 File(s)      3,665,920 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  34,931,535,872 bytes free

C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\bin>

Update

The problem has solved itself!

Not sure whether to post this as an answer as it's all a bit strange.. why wasn't gpg.exe there, why did it suddenly appear.

This doesn't make much sense to me but I just opened cygwin, which I haven't tried installing gpg in.. and I found the gpg command worked(though I had to do ctrl-c when running it from cygwin but it worked). I did which gpg and it showed /cygdrive/c/Program Files (x86)/GnuPG/bin/gpg

I then opened a regular cmd prompt

C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin>dir gpg*
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 4645-5DCE

 Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin

03/09/2020  15:39           399,008 gpg-agent.exe
03/09/2020  15:39           171,680 gpg-connect-agent.exe
03/09/2020  15:39            84,128 gpg-preset-passphrase.exe
03/09/2020  15:39           216,736 gpg-wks-client.exe
03/09/2020  15:39         1,088,160 gpg.exe
03/09/2020  15:39           150,176 gpgconf.exe
03/09/2020  15:39            24,224 gpgme-w32spawn.exe
03/09/2020  15:39           496,800 gpgsm.exe
03/09/2020  15:39           158,880 gpgtar.exe
03/09/2020  15:39           514,208 gpgv.exe
              10 File(s)      3,304,000 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  34,930,319,360 bytes free

C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin>

gpg.exe has "magically" appeared and the date of the files (which is in the UK form dd/mm/yyyy)

C:\Users\User>date
The current date is: 20/11/2020
Enter the new date: (dd-mm-yy)
C:\Users\User>

The date of the files has shifted from 4th september 2020(see directory listing in my question), to 3rd september 2020.. All within 5 minutes.

So it works , and works well and properly , from cmd.exe and I see gpg.exe listed now. But it wasn't there before!

C:\Users\User\bbb>gpg -c a.txt_pwd_a
File 'a.txt_pwd_a.gpg' exists. Overwrite? (y/N) y

C:\Users\User\bbb>gpg a.txt_pwd_a.gpg
gpg: WARNING: no command supplied.  Trying to guess what you mean ...
gpg: AES.CFB encrypted data
gpg: encrypted with 1 passphrase
File 'a.txt_pwd_a' exists. Overwrite? (y/N) y

C:\Users\User\bbb>

Solution 1:

It's two different folders that are similar in name - Gpg4win vs. GnuPG.

The first path is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Gpg4win\bin

The second path, where gpg.exe is located, is: C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuPG\bin

I didn't notice this at first myself when trying to find gpg.exe.