My Documents
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On Microsoft Windows operating systems prior to Vista, My Documents is the name of a special folder on the computer's hard drive that is commonly used to store a user's documents, music, pictures, downloads, and other files.
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[edit] Overview
The My Documents folder was first introduced in Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2, as a standard location for storing user-created files. The folder located under the root of the hard drive that Windows is installed on, is displayed (but not stored) directly on the user's desktop.
In Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the My Documents folder is located in the user's profile directory, as Documents and Settings\[user name]\My Documents on the same hard drive that Windows is installed on. It is important to note that "My Documents" in these operating systems is one of a number of Special Folders, which is a concept introduced in Windows 2000 to add a layer of abstraction between the user interface's presentation of the folder, and its physical location and contents. As such, "My Documents" in file load/save dialogs (and in Windows Explorer) doesn't appear as an absolute path. A user can change the physical location of My Documents by right-clicking on the My Documents icon, choosing properties, and choosing a new path in the Target tab.
In Windows Vista, "My Documents" has been renamed to simply, "Documents". "My Music", "My Pictures" and "My Videos" have also lost their prefix, and have moved to directly under the users' profile directory.
[edit] Other "My" folders
In Windows 98, two additional special folders with a "My" prefix were introduced: "My Music" and "My Pictures." In Windows XP, as with My Documents, these folders can be pointed elsewhere than their default location (on a separate hard drive, for example), but unlike My Documents, this cannot be changed via the user interface. Microsoft's TweakUI can do this.
My Music and My Pictures are not present in Windows Server 2003.
When Windows Media Player 9 or 10 is installed on Windows XP, a "My Videos" folder is also added, which is used by Windows Media Player to store video files that are shown in its media library.
Many other applications have adopted the "My" naming convention when placing folders in the user's My Documents directory.
- Windows Messenger and Windows Live Messenger create a "My Received Files" folder when they are used for the first time.
- "My Games" is becoming an increasingly common place for games (especially those published by Microsoft Game Studios) to store a player's saved game and settings files. This is supposed to make it easier for a user to keep their saved games if they uninstall a game, and if they eventually migrate their files to a newer computer (using the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, for example). For networks with a shared "My Documents" [see Group Policy below], computers that have copies of the same game installed often can not be running the same game at the same time. Microsoft's TweakUI does not include the ability to repath the "My Games" folder.
[edit] Criticism
The use of "My" items on the PC and on some web sites has been criticized for various reasons since their introduction.
Many Windows programs keep the My Documents folders as the default saving location. If the user's desired saving location is not the My folder, the user needs to navigate to their desired saving location on each save, as opposed to other programs that store the last working directory in the registry. However, these folders are virtualized at the shell level and can be pointed to different physical file system directories using tools like TweakUI.
[edit] Group Policy
On Windows machines that are part of a Windows Server domain, the location of My Documents (and other Special Folders) can be configured through Group Policy settings. One common configuration used in corporate desktop deployments, is to redirect My Documents to a folder on a file server.
[edit] References
- MSKB 221837 - Configuration of the My Documents folder
- Redirect My Documents to the home directory based on security group membership
One way for an application to convert environment strings in a user supplied path (e.g. "%HOMEPATH%\My Documents") to an actual path is by calling the function ExpandEnvironmentStrings.
