Changing the Location of My Documents (XP Pro (SP1))

[Cah]

By using TweakUI I was able to change the directory for My Documents to another Partition. I want to keep data off C: Drive. I notice that when I right click on the Start menu and choose Explore I see a document folder for my User Name. What is the relationship between this and "My Documents". Is it the default location for My Documents before making the change? If I'm not using this folder is it possible to delete it (I guess not).

Once I have create my Second User Profile (which I want to be a duplicate of the first). Will I also be able to have that pointing at the same Documents folder on my separate partition? Or should I be using the All Users Shared Documents folder? The trouble with this is that it is on C: drive and I want to keep my data off C: drive.

It seems a little tricky to get all data off C:drive, especially files that seem to want to go in special folders like My Music and My Pictures.

My apologies for all the questions, I just hope they are useful for other people - or rather I should say the answers! This is the best place I know for getting clear sensible advice about Windows XP and all its foibles.

Best wishes,

Chris

[gws]

Hello Chris, If you right click on the my documents icon on the desktop and choose properties / target you can move the my documents contents to where ever you wish. Cheers Gws

[StuartR]

When you right click the Start menu and choose explore, this explores the Start menu itself. This is normally stored in
<code>Cocuments and SettingsusernameStart Menu</code>

StuartR

[Cah]

As an example of the problem I'm encountering I just tried saving an excel file (I'm still using Excel 97). It took me to to the documents folder for my user account. This is different from "My Documents" since I changed the location of this using TweakUI. I'd like programs to go to the location of "My Documents" rather than to the User Documents folder. I don't want to use the User documents folder as it is on C: Drive. Or is it possible to just move it to another drive using Windows Explorer?

Thanks,

Chris

[jscher2000]

I don't know about Excel 97, but in Excel 2002 you can change the default folder here:

Tools > Options... > General > "Default file location"

I suspect this applies both to File>Open... and File>Save As..., but it's somewhat difficult to test due to our document management system.

In Word, the settings can be found under:

Tools > Options... > File Locations > "Documents"