Change user permissions on files/directories where user = fred recursively

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to change the owner permissions of a file only is the owner is currently "fred" for example, leave all groups the same.

The reason for this is that I have recently been forced to login to SFTP via a different user and need to update all of the previous owned files to the new user. Although I dont want to change every files permissions.

Answer 1

Assuming that you have permission to change ownership, try this:

find /path/to/your/folder -user fred -exec chown <new_user> '{}' \;