Change the Default Save Folder in a Windows 7 Library To a Custom Folder

Change the Default Save Folder in a Windows 7 Library To a Custom Folder

When you save a file in a program and you don’t manually change the folder, the file ends up in My Documents by default. What if you want most files to be saved to a different folder without having to navigate to it every time?

We’ve written about how to change the default save location in Word 2007 and 2010 and how to use a third-party tool to change the default save location for any library (the tool also allows you to create new libraries and add folders to libraries).

However, to change the default save location for libraries accessed in programs other than Word, you don’t need any third-party software. You can even add your own custom folder to a library and specify it as the default save location. We will show you two ways to do this.

The first method is to open Windows Explorer, right-click on any one of the libraries, and selectProperties from the popup menu. For this example, we will use the Documents library. The same steps apply to any of the other three default libraries, or custom libraries you have added. The names of the dialog boxes to which we refer reflect the chosen library.

The Documents Properties dialog box displays. Each of the four default libraries has two folder locations: one from your user folder (e.g., C:\Users\Lori) and one from the Public profile folder (e.g.,C:\Users\Public). To add a custom folder to the selected library, click Include a folder.

The Include Folder in Documents dialog box displays. Navigate to the custom folder you want to use as the default save location, select it, and click Include Folder.

The custom folder is added to the list of Library locations. Select the custom folder and click Set save location.

The check marks moves to the custom folder indicating it is now the default save location. Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

The second method is to open Windows Explorer and open the library that contains the folder you want to use as the default save location, or to which you want to add a custom folder as the default save location. Click the Includes: X locations link in the header of the right pane in Explorer. The X locations link shows how many folders are currently included in that library. Moving the mouse over the link displays the names of the folders included in that library.

The Documents Library Locations dialog box displays. To add a custom folder to this library, clickAdd.

On the Include Folder in Documents dialog box, navigate to the custom folder you want to use as the default save location, select it, and click Include Folder.

The custom folder is added to the list of Library locations. Select the custom folder, right-click on it, and select Set as default save location from the popup menu.

Click OK to save your changes and close the dialog box.

If you use Dropbox, you can also set your Dropbox folder as the default save location. A folder on an external hard drive or on a network drive can also be used as the default save location.