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How do I change the location of the My Documents folder?

Question: I have partitioned my hard drive putting the OS and programs on C: and files on separate partitions. How do I get XP’s “My Documents” to refer directly to a location on the other partition?

Turns out there are a couple of ways to do this, and both are fairly simple.

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The quickest and most complete way I know of is in Windows Explorer to right click and hold on C:\Documents and Settings\(your user name)\My Documents, and then drag it to the new location. When you release it’ll ask what you want to do.

For example, on my primary machine, my “My Documents” folder is located in C:\Documents and Settings\LeoN\My Documents. In Windows Explorer I navigate to locate that folder, right click on it and hold, and then drag it over to the root of my D: drive. This is what I see when I release the mouse:

Windows Explorer about to move My Documents folder

Selecting Move Here does several things:

  • It creates a new folder by the name of “My Documents” in the target location
  • It copies all of the files and folders from the old My Documents into the new
  • It removes the old, empty My Documents folder
  • It updates the system registry to use the new “My Documents” folder as the My Documents folder for your account.

Many people are very tempted to go in and simply edit the registry; I recommend against that.

Note that no matter how you move it, some applications may still refer to the old location. You’ll need to update each application as problems arise. In reality, moving My Documents is best done when first setting up a system.

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7 comments on “How do I change the location of the My Documents folder?”

  1. Another way, which doesn’t require TweakUI is to right click on the “real” my Documents folder (by Real I mean the start menu icon, or the desktop icon but NOT a shortcut to My Documents, and NOT the actual location on the disk) usually the easiest way to do this is rely on the one on the start menu as this will be the real folder (assuming you haven’t created extra shortcuts to My Documents on your start menu) and click the then you get the option right there to “move”.

    Simply type in or browse to your new location and click Apply/Ok and Windows will offer you to move all your existing documents to the new location, whilst at the same time updating the registry.

    Reply
  2. For Vista, trying using WinBubble. It is free. Note that a commercial Vista product called TweakVI (note the ‘V’ in the name) has a free version available. But WinBubble works great for what I want to do. Google for “WinBubble” or try something like “vista settings tweak” and you’ll see lots of programs. I’ve used TweakVI and WinBubble, and I like WinBubble better.

    Reply
  3. This worked great the first time around.
    Now I have had to rebuild XP as it became unstable and the pesky My Documents on the C drive is back.
    I tried moving the new my documents to the D drive then moving all the former “My documents”under that but it has not worked.
    I now have both the C drive My Documents that windows explorer defaults to and a new one in the D drive I have to navigate to.

    Is there a way to handle the
    move after a rebuild? Reattach the D drive My Documents in some way?

    Reply
  4. Thank you. I have having problems in Vista (there was no Move button in the Location tab of the My Documents Properties window) and used your first method which worked like a charm!!!

    Reply
  5. Hi Leo, could you please tell me, regarding the drive C, is it possible to share the drive space from other drives D, E etc to increase the size of drive C. ( Drive C disk space id 19.5GB not enough ) windows XP and rest of drives have huge space upto 70GB. I dont want to format drive C at all, but can format other drives as not important files.

    Reply

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