Default Documents/Music/Pictures/Videos folder alternatives?

Mortiferon,

Just let your applications wreck your Documents folder to their hearts' content.

Create a folder of your own within C\Users\%UserName% or on another drive and call it something that makes you think of the word Documents or just call it MyStuff.

Then open each application in turn and work through opening a file & also saving a file in your new MyStuff folder.
- Almost all applications will remember the folder last used so when you next want to open/save a file the dialog will be at MyStuff already. So you'll still have the convenience you had before but your annoying applications will not put their rubbish in it.
- Some applications, such as MS Office, also have a setting for a default folder within their options. You can change that to MyStuff yet the application will still dump its rubbish in the old Documents folder not your new MyStuff one.
- You will just need to check the real Documents folder every now and again such as after Cumulative updates to make sure nothing has reverted to using it. The MSPrintToPDF facility is a particular culprit in this respect - I probably have to reset that back to saving in MyStuff every year.

This is valid & effective whether you have relocated any user folders or not.

Denis

dalchina said:

Hi, there's this:
b. you're still left with programs filling these folders with their folders when installing them

So as long as I can remember, I have been really annoyed [insert stronger words here] with the programs that default to saving user data in a subfolder of their install programs. Even Windows defaults some save operations to a subfolder of \users\username, which is what the OP is trying to change. Since I keep all my user data on a Drive D, it's always extra steps to save my data where I want to.

Can this behavior be fixed with registry changes?

I have never found any method for fixing it which I why I do what I've described above.

Denis