How to Move Your Documents, Music, and Other Folders Somewhere Else in Windows

[Jordan]

How to Move Your Documents, Music, and Other Folders Somewhere Else in Windows

 

By default, Windows stores your personal folders like Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos in C:\Users. If you want to move them to a secondary drive—say, if you have an SSD that can’t house all your files—you can do so with a simple menu option.

 

These folders are stored in your user folder (so, if your user account name is Simon, you’d find them at C:\Users\Simon). You could move these folders by dragging them to the new location, but there are a few issues that can arise by doing so, like errors from certain programs. Using the “official” method we outline below ensures that you’re moving only folders that support being moved, and that Windows always knows where those folders are.

 

 

 

Before we get too far into it, here are the exact folders we’re talking about:

• Contacts
• Desktop
• Documents
• Downloads
• Favorites
• Links
• Music
• Pictures
• Saved Games
• Searches
• Videos

 

There will be folders in your user directory that you can’t move this way. The AppData folder, for example, shouldn’t be moved. Some apps may also create folders there—especially cloud storage apps like OneDrive and Dropbox. You can’t move those using the instructions in this post. Instead, you’ll need to follow instructions for those given apps—we have a guide for moving the OneDrive folder and moving the Dropbox folder, for example.

 

Moving any of the personal folders on that list follows exactly the same procedure and works in every version of Windows from Vista on up—including Windows 7, 8, and 10. The first thing you’ll need to do is close any apps you have running, as open apps can interfere with the move.

Next, open a File Explorer window and navigate to the following folder (where username is the name of your user account):

C:\Users\username

Inside that folder, you should see all the personal folders we mentioned.

 

 

Right-click on the folder you want to move and then click “Properties.”

 

 

In the Properties window for the folder, switch to the “Location” tab. The text box shows the current location of the folder. You can select a new location either by typing the new path directly into the text box or by clicking the “Move” button and browsing for a new location to fill the text box that way. Either way, once the new location is shown, click “OK.”

 

 

The “Move Folder” confirmation window that pops up next is just badly worded enough that it can be confusing. Click “Yes” if you want to create the new location, have Windows start using it, and move all your files from the old location. Click “No” if you just want to create the folder and have Windows start using it, but don’t want to move your current files for some reason. Click “Cancel” to stop everything and not create the new folder location at all. We highly recommend choosing “Yes” so you don’t end up with files in two locations.

 

 

You should now see the folder in the new location. Windows and all your apps will now consider that the official location of that personal folder. Go ahead and repeat this process for the other folders you want to move. And, should you ever need to move it back, you can return to the “Location” tab of the folder’s properties window and either select a new location or just click the “Restore Default” button.

 

SOURCE

[Kalju]

Much easier to do this than to use the good old mouse right click menu and select "Copy to Folder ..." or  "Move to Folder ...". 
It works perfectly in all Windows versions.

[nasa]

Much easier to just cut & paste or drag & drop all of the folders at the same time, instead of one by one.

[Kalju]

13 minutes ago, nasa said:

Much easier to just cut & paste or drag & drop all of the folders at the same time, instead of one by one.

Unfortunately, does not work always and everywhere.

[nasa]

16 minutes ago, Kalju said:

Unfortunately, does not work always and everywhere.

In my experience, works whenever and wherever the OP method works.

[AlienForce1]

1 hour ago, Kalju said:

Unfortunately, does not work always and everywhere.

 

58 minutes ago, nasa said:

In my experience, works whenever and wherever the OP method works.

 

With the method described by   jordan4x  the Windows works just like the files are in their original place (C:\users) and all the dependencies are maintaned . 

[straycat19]

Yes, this works seamlessly.  You can also change the location of other data thru the registry by modifying the keys in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

and look for ProgramFilesDir and ProgramFilesDir(x86).

 

I do this for all my gaming systems since the SSDs are too small to hold all my games since my data alone almost fills a 4TB drive.

[eurobyn]

never move desktop to another location.

all the rest is fine but not the desktop or hidden folders.

 

just select what you want to move and choose cut ....open the folder where you want the folder be placed and choose paste.

you have to do it from the exact location and not from libraries folder !

c:\users\user\........ all folders except the desktop folder and hidden folders.