How to change the Default File Save Location in MS Office
By Default when you save a document in Microsoft Word, it saves in my Document folder in C drive , to be more precise the saving location is “C:\Users\user name\Documents\”. That’s fine as long as you backup your documents on any other external device or a separate partition regularly.
Disadvantage : You lose all your documents if your system crashes for any reason, your system doesn’t boot and you need to format to re-install windows. The location where word saves your Documents is in the C drive,which is definitely very risky, should anything go wrong with your C drive you lose everything saved in that drive, and you don’t want that to happen.
Sometime back I wrote an article about “How to partition your hard disk”, to have dedicated partitions to save your Documents, Photo collections, Movies, Games , Software backups etc. Making such dedicated partitions does have a lot of advantages. Keeping your C drive dedicated for the Operating system only and separating it from the user files does have a lot of advantages in the event of any system failures.
The procedure described here is the same to set the save default in the other office programs. It also works the same in Office 2007 and Office 2010
So how to change the default save location in Office Word.
Step 1. Open MS Word than click on the round orb on the extreme left of the window to get the following window.
In this window at the bottom click on the “Word options” tab as shown here.
And you will get the following option window.
Step 2: On the left panel click on the “Save” option, and on the left pane under the “Default file location” you will see the location as “C:\Users\user name\Documents\” where user name is the name of you computer registered,(that’s the default location) under this tab click on the “Browse” button and locate the Partition or the folder where you want to save your Documents, and than click on apply and Save. From now on whenever you save any Word document it will be automatically saved in the Folder or the Partition you have specified.
In the Picture below as you can see I have a separate dedicated partition as “Documents” which I have selected and all my documents automatically gets saved there.
It does make a lot of sense and saves you lot of trouble and even saves you from disaster to have dedicated partition’s for your Documents, Collections of Photos, Music collections, Video collections etc. Keep the Operating system files separated from the user files, so even if your main system drive crashes, or you need to format for fresh windows installation your files are safe in their own partitions.
How do you proceed to partition your Hard disk and how many Partitions would you require, get some Ideas and Hints from Here.
Was this TIP helpful ? How do you Partition your Hard disk ? Share your ideas .
Posted By: Ben Jamir
