How to change the location of the documents folder. How to change the location of standard user folders in Windows. How to move the My Documents folder

Operating windows system by default provides users special folders to save their data, such as Documents, Music, Videos, Images etc. Most programs are configured to store user data in these directories. By default, all these folders are located on the C: drive in the Users... However, if your operating system is mocking and the only method her treatment will be complete reinstallation with disk formatting, all your data will be lost forever. Therefore, I want to remind, especially for novice users, an easy way to avoid these troubles.

So, to securely store your data even in the event of a Windows failure, you must first take care of transferring it to another disk. It's best if your computer has two physical disks, but a different partition on one disk will work as well.

The first step is to open your home directorywhich is located at

C: \\ Users \\ Username

Then select the folder you want to move, click on it right click mouse and select in context menu paragraph Properties... In the window that appears, go to the tab Location.

Here we see three buttons, we are interested in the middle one - Move... After clicking it, a folder selection window appears, in which we must specify the new location of the standard directory. It remains only to confirm your choice by clicking on OK, and then allow the transfer of files to a new location in the pop-up dialog box.

Such easy setupapplied to all the folders with your data you need, can save you a huge amount of nerves and time in the event of a sudden Windows crash. You just reinstall the system, then again specify the path to your data folders on another disk and get back all your photos, movies, music, documents and even the Desktop. I recommend that you do this simple maneuver immediately after installing the system.

An interesting question came in, to which I considered it necessary to devote an entire article. The question was as follows:

How do I move My Documents and Desktop folders?

Based on this lesson, you can move not only these folders, but also other service ones, for example, the “Favorites” folder.

You may be wondering why you need it? Well, they sit in one place, well, let them sit, why swap them?

The fact is that folders "My Documents" and "Desktop", like other service folders, are located on. And many people like to store folders with movies, music, photos and games right on the desktop, I've seen this several times already.

Therefore, for such amateurs it will be very useful material. Since all this information stored on the desktop or in the "My Documents" folder will be located on system diskwhich is usually smaller than the rest of the computer. And if you hammer it to capacity, I'm talking about the system drive, then your computer may start to work poorly, or stop loading altogether.

But, when you point out workplace folders "My Documents" and "Desktop" on another disk, for example, disk D, then this problem will simply disappear.

You will be able to store all the information that another local diskwithout worrying about the health of the system drive.

Now let's get down to implementing the technical plan.

Some of you may already know about the Windows Registry. Who does not know, I will say briefly - all system settings are stored in the registry, including those about the installed programs. From the registry, you can change almost everything!

But, I must warn you that you need to poke around there with extreme caution, since one wrong step, and performance may be disrupted operating system... And then it will be difficult to find your joint! Since there are a great many entries in the registry.

However, if you have 7 installed, and not XP, then you won't have to go into the registry at all. Since everything can be changed in the folder settings. Unfortunately, I will not be able to give a full detailed material on Windows XP, since a week ago I installed Windows 7 for myself.

But I still remember how you can change the storage location of these folders.

Move the folder “My Documents” to Windows XP.

It is quite easy to move it, since it is a service folder, all you need is to right-click on it in the menu “ Start”. From the drop-down menu select the last item “ Properties", Then, in the window that appears, open the tab" Destination”. There you can specify the path to store this folder. Moreover, there should be a button “ Move", By clicking which, the entire contents of the folder" My documents"- will be transferred along the path you specified.

If this folder is not in the Start menu, try to find it on your system drive in your profile folder.

But, you can make the "My Documents" folder appear in the "Start" menu. To do this, just right-click on the button “ Start", Select the item" Properties", And press the button" Tune”. A list of "Start" menu items will appear, and there you will already find the item " My documents”And put it displayed as a link or menu. Do not forget to press the button “ OK”For all changes to take effect.

Move the "Desktop" folder to Windows XP.

I want to note right away that I cannot provide pictures for the topic on Windows XP, since I don’t have this one, but perhaps you can move the "Desktop" folder like the "My Documents" folder... Just find it on your system drive and open the “ Properties"If there is a tab" Destination"- just change the path and click move, if not, you will have to go into the Windows registry. Again, I cannot verify this myself.

In order to enter the registry, run the command “ Start” - “Execute”.

In the window that appears, enter the following command - “ regedit”, Without quotes. Press the key “ Enter”And you will see the system registry window.

Let me remind you once again, do not try to cheat something there if you do not know what you are doing, since the consequences can be the most unpredictable.

And so, the registry window is open in front of you, and now you can change the destination of the service folders, in order to do this you need to go along the following path (on the left in the column):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \\ Software \\ Microsoft \\ Windows \\ CurrentVersion \\ Explorer \\ User Shell Folders

It is in this path that you can change the location of the "Desktop" folder (the right side of the window), and not only it, all service folders are registered there. And so, we go along this path, there you will see several more folders, and one of them will be called “ Desktop" or " Desktop”(In Windows 7 this folder is called that way, perhaps in XP it will be the same).

Here we select in the right half of the window "Desktop" or "Desktop", see the picture below, however, this is a snapshot of the Windows 7 registry:

Click to enlarge.

Please note that the "Change string parameter" window would appear and it is enough to double-click on the list item, in my case "Desktop", I underlined it with a red line.

A window appears in front of you, where the path to the folder is already registered. The inscription “ % USERPROFILE%”Means the path to the user record on the system disk. What to do now? When you have already opened such a window.

Create a folder in the location where you want to place it, for example, on the D drive, create a folder "Desktop" and specify instead of the inscription “ % USERPROFILE% \\ Desktop” - “D: \\ Desktop”.

That's it, we apply the changes, and your desktop is already in a different place. Just remember to transfer everything from your old desktop to your new one. It is enough just to copy them to a new folder, and you can delete them in the old one.

Moving the folders "My Documents" and "Desktop" in Windows 7.

Everything is simpler here, we won't have to go anywhere, since everything can be changed through the folder settings. You can apply everything as I said above, through the "" menu, everything is almost exactly the same, you can apply everything through the registry, or you can simply find these folders, since they are all located in one place and you can call the properties directly from the explorer and change their place default location, which we will do now.

We go along the following path:

System disk :\ Users \ The name of your profile in the system.

Or in the start menu, select his name at the top right, under your profile picture. See the picture below.

After clicking on the name of your entry, you will immediately be taken to your personal folder, where all service folders are located. Then just select the folder you want, right-click and select “ Properties"And in the window that appears, select the tab" Location”:

Then create a folder in the place where you need it, press the button “ Move”, In the window that appears, specify this folder. After these simple steps, your desktop, like any other folder, will move to a new place of residence.

Please note that the path (I underlined it with a red line) has changed. If it remains the same, change it manually and click apply.

To restore everything to its original position, simply select the button “ Default”.

I think everything is here, as we can see, there is nothing super complicated here, and any beginner can cope with it.

PS: if you have Windows XP, and you found some simpler way, please post it in the comments. Since I can no longer have more detailed information.

We all know such a folder as My documents, it is located in the user's personal folder, namely at the following address: C: \\ Users \\ Name \\ Documents (in the Russian edition, Users are displayed instead of Users, and My Documents instead of Documents).

There are situations when it would be very good to place this folder in a different place, for example, on another disk or partition - this will save space on the system disk.

By the way, if you have two physical disks, then it is better to install games on another disk, and large programs too, all this will distribute the load - the system disk will be less loaded and Windows will work more responsive than if you installed everything on one disk ...

How to set a new folder for documents in Windows 7?

This method will allow you to make sure that all new documents will be stored elsewhere. That is, the folder My documents will remain in its place along with the files in it, but the default for documents will be the new folder you specified.

In Windows 7 there is such a thing as "libraries" and their number is equal to four - Videos, Documents, Images, Music. But we are only interested in one - Documents (other libraries can be configured as well).

Go to folder properties Documents (to do this, open A computer, and on the left in the list will be Libraries):

One library can have several folders, and you can add all of them yourself (click Add folder ...):

For example, I'll add a folder C: \\ Documents, but you can create such a folder on another drive, I just have one C drive and that's it:

After that, the folder that you just specified will appear in the list. To make it the main now, you need to click on it and select Set save folder:

That's it, after that you now have a new location for your documents.

But you just set the new folder by default, the files from the old folder to the new one will not be moved. Of course, you can do this yourself, but it is better to use the method that I will describe later.

How do I move the My Documents folder?

To do this, go to the properties of the folder My documents (which is in the library Documents).

The Windows operating system allows you to change the path of some user folders that are located in the user profile. So if you suddenly need to change the location of the folder Downloads on your own. This can be useful for those users who often download large files from the internet using Microsoft Edge or other internet programs. This article will show you how to remap your own path for the Downloads folder in two different ways. .

Every time after next update Microsoft Edge browser kernel, the path to the Downloads folder will have to be updated again. Do not lose sight of this moment.

See How do I add Save As to Microsoft Edge? I considered the possibility of changing the file download dialog for Microsoft Egde and now every time you download any file, the browser will offer you the opportunity to save the file as. But if you don't need such functionality, but just need to change the Downloads folder to your own, then read this article further.

Change the location of the Downloads folder in File Explorer

Let's first look at the easiest way to change the location of the Downloads folder using the properties of this folder.

Open up Conductor on a computer with Windows 7, 8, 10. Right click on the folder Downloads in the navigation pane, and select Properties.

Downloads - Properties

In the window that opens, go to the tab Location and enter a new path for desired folder downloads.

New Download Location

In this case, you can move the already downloaded files to the new Downloads folder. Then press the button Yesto move all files from the old location to the new location. Otherwise click No.

Moving a folder

Now the download folder will have a new location, and all files downloaded through Microsoft Edge will go to it.

Changing the path to the Downloads folder in Registry Editor

If you prefer to work with windows registry, then this method will change the path to the Downloads folder using the registry.

Run registry editor and go to the next section:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \\ Software \\ Microsoft \\ Windows \\ CurrentVersion \\ Explorer \\ User Shell Folders

Find key with string % USERPROFILE% \\ Downloads... By double-clicking on the line, change the parameter to the value of the path you want to set.

Windows Registry Editor

Close the registry editor. Now the Downloads folder has new address location. Restart your computer to save your changes in Registry Editor.

It should be noted that files that were located in the Downloads folder at the default address will not be moved to a new location, unlike the first method. If you need to have these files in a new location in the Downloads folder, move them to the new folder yourself.

By default, the My Documents folder in Windows 7 is located in the user's directory at:

C: \\ Users \\ YourName \\ Documents

In the Russian version, the Users folder name is displayed as Users, and the Documents folder name is displayed as My Documents.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to change the location of the My Documents folder to something else, for example, to move this folder to the D: drive, for example, for security reasons or to save space on the system drive. This article will show you how you can do this.

Set a new default folder for documents

This method is not really a movement in the literal sense of the word, so you can skip straight to the next subheading.

In Windows 7, there is such a thing as Libraries... There are 4 main libraries: for videos, documents, images and music. For now, we are only interested in documents, although other libraries are configured in a similar way.

By default, these libraries appear on the Start menu, as well as in the left pane of any folder. One library can include several folders, and you can add any folders there yourself. This can be done by right-clicking on the Documents item and then selecting Properties. You will see a window like this:

Using the button Add folder ... You can include any folder in the list, for example, D: \\ Documents, as I did. Then you can select the added folder in the list and press the button Set save folderto make the new folder the default document folder.

Please note that no files will be moved to the added folder. Thus, you just tell the system that you want to use this folder as the main one for storing documents. For example, if some program requests access to My Documents, the system will give the path to the "default folder". Also, if you click on the "Documents" library in the left panel while saving a file, the file will be saved to your new folder.

If you want to move files to a new folder, you can do it manually, but it is better to use the method suggested below.

Moving the My Documents folder to another location

To move the My Documents folder to another location, follow these steps:

After completing these steps, your old folder My Documents will disappear from the old location (that is, from the user profile folder). A new folder in the explorer will be displayed as My Documents regardless of what it was called before.

I hope that after reading this article you will not have any difficulties in setting the location of the My Documents folder.