by Michael Gordon
The setup program for Microsoft Office creates a folder for all documents created by, and used in, the several Office programs. The default behavior of this is the creation of a "My Documents" folder at the root of the drive on which you installed Office. Thus, if you installed Word to C:\Msoffice\Winword, setup created "My Documents" on the root of the C: drive, C:\My Documents.
Are you uncomfortable with having Office and your precious documents on the same drive? I know I am. So, how to change the location of this folder? First, we search for My Documents in the index of the Office manual. Hmmm, not much there. Take a look in the Office Resource Kit. I couldn’t find anything. How about the Knowledge Base? The only article I could find dealt with a network installation. Technical support? The advice there seems to be along the lines of "use the default location or ignore it because there is no easy way" to relocate the My Documents folder. How can one ignore it? What’s the "hard" way? Is there really no "easy" way? Read on and we shall seek enlightenment.
The Party Line
Assuming you don’t want to use the default location—why else are you reading this?—what about ignoring My Documents and pointing the individual applications to a common default on another drive? This seems to be the advice du jour from Microsoft and it works—to a degree. While only Excel seems to have a startup switch which specifies a working directory, you can set the default document location in each of the Office applications to alternative folders.
The much-publicized Common User Interface (CUI) of Office will get you to Tools, then Options, but then breaks down: it’s File Locations in Word, General in Excel and Access, and Advanced in PowerPoint. These options work but you will give up a lot of the conveniences which Office offers. Binder, for example, will want to save to My Documents no matter what.
Even worse is that you will lose the marvelous capabilities of Office File Open (which nicely appears on the Office Shortcut Bar (OSB) and not-so-nicely on the Start Menu). Office File Open starts browsing documents in the My Documents folder created by Office Setup. Oh, you can start scrolling around your system, searching for the folder you want. The Office File Open dialog even provides an icon which takes you to your Favorites folder which, by default, contains a shortcut back to the My Documents folder you just left.
I suppose the shortcut could be set to point somewhere else, but talk about clumsy! There’s just got to be a better way. Well, the official word from Microsoft is that the default directory "can only be accomplished by editing the Windows registry." Ouch!
Relocating is Hard to Do
Let’s take Microsoft at its word and begin with the "hard" way, a procedure oddly enough "not supported by Microsoft," hacking the Registry. If you run the Registry Editor (Start / Run / regedit) and do a search for "My Documents" you’ll see entries where a Personal key points to the default location (e.g., C:\My Documents).
These are all locations for folders under Explorer in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_USERS, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE trees. They can be edited to change the location; in fact, just editing the -
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
- key may be all you need to do. Some of the applications, e.g., Word and Access, will pick up this change automatically, while others, e.g., Excel, will have to be changed individually, either in the Registry or in Excel’s Tools / Options / General.
This will work, but the warning to "use Registry Editor at your own risk" may make you wary. In the Underground Labs, monkeying around with the Registry is often compared to oral surgery, only it’s not as much fun. Is there really no "easy" way?
The Underground Line
Let’s forget the official word and dig a little deeper.
Windows 95 software is supposed to be intuitive, right? So what does your intuition tell you? How about just deleting My Documents on the applications drive and then renaming your document folder on your document drive to My Documents? That’s so simple it couldn’t work, right? Right; it doesn’t. My Documents is a system folder and can’t be deleted.
Okay, you’ll be clever: if what you really need is the capability of Office File Open, what about working with that? So you take a look at the shortcut, either on the OSB or in the Start Menu. By viewing their Properties, then Shortcut, you see that "msow.exe -f" doesn’t point to any specific folder but there is an empty box enticingly entitled Start In. Just enter there the path to your other drive? You can, but nothing will happen. None of the Office applications pay any attention to that path, though WordPad and Notepad will.
One more possibility: the OSB has, under its Customize command, an option for Settings. This very nicely enables you to establish your own location for User Templates and Workgroup Templates, but not for My Documents.
Maybe Explorer can help. Open Explorer, right click on the default My Documents folder, drag it to the other drive, release the click and, from the menu that appears, select Move. That’s it! Success!
The Office applications (except for Excel) will pick up the new location of the My Documents folder, as will Office File Open. Binder will look there for new files as well. Even reinstalls of Office, after you’ve totally wiped out the previous install, will remember it. Oh yes, and the Registry will pick up the change in all of the User keys, but not the Local Machine one, but that doesn’t seem to cause any problems.
The only place in Office which doesn’t pick up the change is the shortcut to My Documents on the Favorites Toolbar in the OSB, but that can easily be edited by changing the shortcut’s target (right click on the button and select properties).That’s it: obvious (once you know how) and possibly even easy.
One more thing: we’ve been talking about relocating, but what about renaming? Do you think that having My Computer constantly on your desktop is enough cuteness and you want to rename My Documents (wherever it’s located) to something else? Select the folder in Explorer, F2 or right-click to Rename, and type in your new name. And this time even Excel picks this up automatically.
Michael is Professor of History at Denison University. So, his angle on Office 95 and Windows 95 is that of an experienced power user, rather than a computer consultant. This fresh, pristine outlook from "outside the PC biz" is precisely why the editors chose him as a Contributing Editor. Michael’s also a Microsoft MVP for Desktop Applications. You can reach Michael at 71053.471@compuserve.com or at gordonm@cc.denison.edu.
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