Partitions & My Documents for Different Users

[rlondre]

Hi,

I have my hard drive partitioned. On my C: Drive I have my OS and Program Files and on my D: drive I have all my personal files. Now, my wife and I are different users on WinXPpro. Usually, when there are different users, one user cannot view or access files saved in the mydocuments folder of another user. However, because I like to save my files on a different partition than the partition win OS is on I can not figure out how to set up a "mydocuments" folder on the D: drive so it acts like the mydocuments folder on the same partition as the OS. In other words I would like to keep our files separate. I am obsessive about organizing my files and my folders but my wife will save her files anywhere. I want to avoid this by keeping our files separate by logging in as different users. How can I do this?

Thanks

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

You can change user environment variable %USERPROFILE% to point to the new location. %USERPROFILE%\My Documents points to each user's My Documents folder.

[rlondre]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

You can change user environment variable %USERPROFILE% to point to the new location. %USERPROFILE%\My Documents points to each user's My Documents folder.

Thank you for the help. But would you please be more descriptive. I'm not sure how to do what you suggest.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Sorry for not being more clear.

Environment variables can contain various values, and are one way of distinguishing users from each other. The %USERPROFILE% environment variable by default points to C:\Documents and Settings\{username}; this is where the 'My Documents' folder resides. If you change this environment variable to the new location of your 'My Documents' folder, then Windows will find it automatically. You will also change the same environment variable for the other user to point to that user's 'My Documents' location.

For details on how to change these user environment variables, see this article or this.

Let us know if you need more information.

[rlondre]

When I go to the control panel and select system, then advanced tab, then environmental variables there are two user variables for the user "Ron". 1st is TEMP and the 2nd is TMP for both the variable value reads C:\Documents and Settings\Ron\Local Settings\Temp and when I chose to edit the value it reads %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp for both. Are either of these values the item I should change? If so, what do I enter as the new value? The folder I would like to point to is D:\Ron's Documents.

Thank you for your help thus far

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought that you would want your entire %USERPROFILE% structure move to the D: drive. This would also include 'My Documents' with the original name.

But you want only 'My Documents', and with a different name. In this case, leave the environment variables alone, and use this procedure instead: http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/wind...r_redirect.html (instead of \\Test220\SupportDocs you will just use D:\Ron's Documents).