Windows 10 Change default opening folder

cryptogram

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2014
All my data is on my D drive. I want to make that the drive that opens when I go to open a file, rather than My Documents. How do I do this?
 
Generally speaking, that has to be done for each different type of program or data file. This can be done in a variety of ways, what you are really after is to change the default SAVE location for each data file or data file type. To my knowledge there is not a global setting in windows to do this for ALL programs.

For example, to change the default location a file opens from in Word2016, you do this:
Open Word2016 document-->click on Home tab-->click on File tab-->Options-->Advanced-->General-->File locations button-->Documents-->click on Modify button, then use the File Explore browse box to navigate to the D: drive folder where this file is currently saved. Save your file preference. Close out by clicking OK until you get back to the File menu, then click Home to get back to your original document view. When you close that Word file, and save it to a shortcut on your desktop and open it again by clicking on the shortcut, Word will tell Windows the location of your D: drive folder and Word will go there to open the file from that folder, launch the Word app and open the file for you in Word! :) Simple. The problem is you have to do this for each and every Word file on your D: drive. Then you have to repeat that for all your other file types, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Access, Pdf, etc. This can be tedious to say the least.

There may be some global system wide setting to do this, but I'm not aware of it in W10. Perhaps one of the guys here can suggest a batch file or a script file that can be run on your W10 machine to do it.

You might also try to search other tech forums including the Microsoft Community forum and see if you get any answers there too.

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
Agree with BBJ the default Open/Save location is generally driven by the application.
 
Generally speaking, that has to be done for each different type of program or data file. This can be done in a variety of ways, what you are really after is to change the default SAVE location for each data file or data file type. To my knowledge there is not a global setting in windows to do this for ALL programs.

For example, to change the default location a file opens from in Word2016, you do this:
Open Word2016 document-->click on Home tab-->click on File tab-->Options-->Advanced-->General-->File locations button-->Documents-->click on Modify button, then use the File Explore browse box to navigate to the D: drive folder where this file is currently saved. Save your file preference. Close out by clicking OK until you get back to the File menu, then click Home to get back to your original document view. When you close that Word file, and save it to a shortcut on your desktop and open it again by clicking on the shortcut, Word will tell Windows the location of your D: drive folder and Word will go there to open the file from that folder, launch the Word app and open the file for you in Word! :) Simple. The problem is you have to do this for each and every Word file on your D: drive. Then you have to repeat that for all your other file types, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Access, Pdf, etc. This can be tedious to say the least.

There may be some global system wide setting to do this, but I'm not aware of it in W10. Perhaps one of the guys here can suggest a batch file or a script file that can be run on your W10 machine to do it.

You might also try to search other tech forums including the Microsoft Community forum and see if you get any answers there too.

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

If I go to Settings/System/Storage it appears that you can instruct Windows where to save stuff. But this doesn't seem to work.
 
That is correct, this is only the generic locations for Windows. Save locations with applications can either be hard coded into a given application or they have a setting within a file or registry that controls where to save. This is completely up to the developers, so if the application(s) you are trying to change don't have the ability to change the save location, that would be a feature request to the developers.
 
That is correct, this is only the generic locations for Windows. Save locations with applications can either be hard coded into a given application or they have a setting within a file or registry that controls where to save. This is completely up to the developers, so if the application(s) you are trying to change don't have the ability to change the save location, that would be a feature request to the developers.

OK> Thanks everyone.
 
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