How to Change Default File Save Location in Microsoft Office?

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While working in Microsoft Office, when you try to open or save a document, it opens the default documents folder to open or save the file.

This tutorial will teach you how to change this default location to your desired drive or folder, so that you don't need to browse to that folder each time. It'll be save your precious time.

So here we start:

For Microsoft Office 2000, XP and 2003:

1. Open any Office application like Microsoft Word and click on "Tools -> Options".

2. Click on "File Locations" tab and select "Documents". Now click on "Modify" button:

3. It'll open browse window. Navigate to the desired drive or folder which you want to set as default location and click on OK button. It'll change the file location. Now click on OK button and you have done.

NOTE: You'll need to follow these steps for all Office applications separately.

For Microsoft Office 2007:

1. Open any Office application like Microsoft Word and click on Office ORB (Big round button) at top-left:

2. Now click on "Word Options" button. It'll open Options window. Click on "Save" tab and in right-side pane, you can change the "Default file location" by simply typing the exact path or by selecting the desired drive/folder using Browse button:

NOTE: You'll need to follow these steps for all Office applications separately.

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This article was posted by VG in following section: Microsoft Office.

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Mike

The photos don't show.
h krishnan

This does not work. Again on "save as " goes to my documents folder
HKrishnan
Jesse

thanks, big help.keeps things in tidy manner.
bill

this is great and very helpful if it's only a few machines. I support over 2000 desktops, so my questions is what is the quickest way of performing this on that many machines? Which group policy takes care of this?
Mary

When I go to select the location that I want (in my case, I wanted My Computer as the default), I got an error message saying that this location was not valid. (BTW...this is on my work computer. Our Tech. Support folks don't know how to change this.....)
VG

^^ You'll need to select a drive of folder. You can't save a file directly in My Computer.
juriaan

do i need to restart the computer for this? I run wondows7, did what you suggests and voila, nothing changes: office wants to save to the desktop and not to a folder that i specify
VG

^^ No you don't need to restart your system. It works fine here.
Jolie

THANK YOU!!!! I am a teacher and save a TON of stuff to my "jump" drive. It was taking me forever to navigate to where I needed my stuff saved. Now I just click save as and it brings me right to my "jump" drive.
dnice

Like juriann and h krishnan, this isn't working for me. I've changed the default location to a specific folder where I want my files saved, and it stayed for one file save. Now, when I try to save, the default location is back to the "Documents" folder. Checked the default location, and it shows what I changed it to, but still not saving by default there - I still have to navigate to that folder from the save menu (a long and laborious process, I might add). Why isn't this working?

BTW - I'm using Windows 7, Home Premium and Office 2010.