Rearranging Windows ‘special’ folders

By default, a Windows user’s home directory is an utter mess. Whoever decided that Pictures and Folders should be children of Documents needs to lesson in semantic somethingorother, and a ban from producing nonsense. Thankfully, it can be fixed.

Personally, I complicate the process by having as much of my user directory on a separate hard disk partition, but hey, it’s all informative. Regardless of where you keep it, you can end up with a home directory that’s altogether more unixy (read: sensible), like this:

A home directory displayed in Windows Explorer, showing only relevant and useful sub directories, and with Music and Pictures folders as siblings to Documents

First up, it’s important to understand one of the odd things that Windows does in the background. Unlike applications, whereby if renamed or moved they break instantly, Windows keeps a careful eye on its special folders. The ones I have in mind are:

What you can do is move and rename any of those folders and Windows won’t break. All modern applications will get the path to documents and pictures folders from global variables and when you move one of the above folders, Windows updates the global variable.

There is no real voodoo to this: It’s all a glorified exercise in drag and drop. If moving between partitions, remember to hold right-click and choose Move, since the default left-click drag action between partitions is to copy. Pictures and Music folders can be moved from My Documents to wherever you like and iTunes, Picasa and the like should stay happy.

One thing to keep in mind: don’t move Application Data on a well established user account with lots of installed applications. When I say that Windows won’t break, it’s not a promise. Firefox (which has its settings stored in Application Data) maintains absolute paths to installed extensions (these don’t update when you move it), and I suspect some other applications might not be so robust either. With a brand new user account though, you seem to be able to move things around as much as you like.

A few oddities: Local Settings, which is like Application Settings (and even has a subdirectory of the same name, for reasons of utter incomprehensibility, I presume). Windows wouldn’t let me move that one, I guess something must be permanently in use whilst Windows is running. My Recent Documents doesn’t want to budge either.

In the above screenshot, there are some links to Resources and All Users. That’s my version of MacOSX’s Library and Shared files, but with more Windows-esque names. The true All Users directories in Windows (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents, and so forth) can’t be moved at all, so I tend just to ignore them, hide them and slap a Deny ACL on them. The version in my links toolbar is just a folder of the same name.

There’re a number of things that are immediately rantworthy:

  1. The fact that Windows XP’s default folder arrangement is so mind-warpingly stupid that I even considered moving it around in the first place. Pretty rant-worthy, but they have fixed it for Windows Vista.
  2. Why can’t you just define a custom location for user profiles when you create them? (And why can’t you keep them separate to a Windows install? It would let me to import my complete user account unscathed every time I reinstall Windows).
  3. Why All Users is so special that it can’t be moved
  4. And, relating more to the screenshot, why when I have Windows set to reuse Explorer windows (open folders in the same window) does clicking something on the Links toolbar always open new windows? Why? Seriously? It doesn’t do that if I choose something in the ordinary Favourites menu.

In conclusion, Windows XP is nonsense, but you can beat it into a slightly smoother shape (some parts more easily than others). Apologies for the rough nature of this write-up, it’s more of a spur-of-the-moment job.

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7 Responses to “Rearranging Windows ‘special’ folders”

  1. Comment by http://www.ibboard.co.uk IBBoard

    November 10th, 2005 at 10:54 pm 2005-11-10UTC22:54:43+0000

    I’ve just been looking into this today – although in a more “all or nothing” way. I’ve got an 8GB partition for Windows and “stuff that has to be there”, but it was getting a little full. I’ve managed to boost it up to a little over 2GB of free space (moving my g/f’s Sims 2 expansion pack install to my ‘games’ drive helped by about a gig!) but I’ve still got a gig and a bit taken up in my profile (with Sims saves being saved into My Docs for unknown reasons and taking up about half of it). I was hoping to move it all to my SATA disk, and Microsoft say it’s possible to move just about all of it, they just don’t have it as a supported method and aren’t to blame if it all goes wrong!

    If I end up with low disk space again, I might have to look at moving the just the My Docs with your simple “drag and drop” method.

  2. Comment by http://www.ibboard.co.uk IBBoard

    November 11th, 2005 at 8:19 pm 2005-11-11UTC20:19:10+0000

    I’ve just been thinking about the whole “My Documents” thing (after hopefully starting to save another 500MB of disk space by clearing out the “windowssoftwaredistributiondownload” folder) and it almost makes sense, as long as you don’t think of it as “My Documents”.

    Linux gives you a “Home” directory, readilly accessible at “~/” or via the “Home” icon on the desktop. Windows gives you a “My Documets” folder, easily accessible from the “My Documents” icon on the desktop.

    Linux stores application data and settings within dot-hidden folders (e.g. .gaim, .gimp, .gedit) that are inside your Home folder. Very few people bother using “Show All”, I imagine (too many of them!), so they’re discreet and out of the way. Windows stores application data and settings within hidden folders in the level above “My Documents”, so that even if you unhide hidden folders, you still don’t get too many app-specific and potentially dangerous folders. Given the comparative current user-bases, it makes sense.

    So, as long as “My Documents” more as “My Home Folder” (or even “My Dumping Ground”!) then it makes a little more sense, and “My eBooks”, “My Pictures”, “My Received Files”, “My Music” and “My Videos” (and “My Archives” if you’ve got StuffIt installed) make a bit more sense being in there.

    thinks back over the message I think need a shower in one of those decontamination things, I actually just supported Microsoft’s methodology, in a way!

  3. Comment by http://ben-ward.co.uk Ben

    November 12th, 2005 at 9:30 pm 2005-11-12UTC21:30:57+0000

    You can try thinking of it like that, yes. But Windows already has a Home directory: the level above My Documents. I worked like that for a while, but came across frustrations that I can’t recall properly.

  4. Comment by Vitus

    December 1st, 2005 at 6:00 am 2005-12-01UTC06:00:06+0000

    Hey, I’ve been in the bisnuss of “beating WinXp into shape” for a bit now. It was a big jump for me(having learned on a Win95) but it didnt take me to long. Now imworking on eraticating the old “special” folders and reinstatuteing My own Folders. Such as My Programs (For programs i’ve written). I’ve dove pretty deep and all i’ve uncovered is that specil folders are mostly a buch of smoke and lights. (So Far) there locations are in the Windows Registry which is why they always keep their links in shape. I was wondering if you could offer anyform of insight on the process of making a special folder.

    Should have it down in a few weeks if im not distracted
    ~Vitus

  5. Comment by http://ben-ward.co.uk Ben

    December 1st, 2005 at 12:37 pm 2005-12-01UTC12:37:17+0000

    Smoke and lights is probably a good way to describe them. It’s a shame they’re so awkward to customise, but hey.

    Personally, my coding projects sit in a folder called Developer in my home directory (as in the screenshot) but there’s nothing special about it under the hood; I just changed the icon using XP’s standard Customise tab.

    I’m not aware of any way to make a special folder, but then again, what exactly do you want to be special about it? Is there a particular behaviour you want to gain over just having an ordinary folder?

  6. Comment by http://NA J. Dykes

    April 22nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm 2006-04-22UTC17:27:24+0000

    Does any of this apply to the ordinary person – as in thick, old and inexperienced??

  7. Comment by http://ben-ward.co.uk Ben

    April 30th, 2006 at 1:05 am 2006-04-30UTC01:05:55+0000

    J. Dykes, honestly, no. This kind of customisation is very much in the realm of the pedant. In my case the motivation stems from using a Mac and PC in fairly equal part. The Mac has an extremely sensible system of organising files whilst the PC adopts a system apparently designed by a monkey.

    So for me, there’s a lot of benefit in running the two in as similar way as possible (in this case adopting the Mac organisation onto my PC). For most use though, I don’t think it’s worth the effort: Especially since you’ll occasionally comes across an application that expects to find folders in their default locations, and then needs persuading to look elsewhere (although very rarely I’ve found).