Changing your default file open and save locations - Microsoft Office Help Tips

Microsoft uses default open and save locations for its Office programs just like they use default fonts and styles for their Office documents. For most people this is ok and they will just stick with the defaults. Or they may not even know that they can be changed. Some people like to save everything on their desktop or on a network share on a file server so it can be backed up in case of a computer crash.

If you are one of those types that doesn't save all of your documents in the My Documents folder, you may want to change the first place Office looks when you click on open or save. Many people like to save their documents somewhere else for various reasons. We will show you how to change these settings for Microsoft Word and Excel.

For Word you want to go to Tools and then Options. Next you will click on the File Locations tab and then the modify button as shown in the image below. For newer versions of Office check out our link at the bottom of the page.

When you click on Modify you will get a browse window. Select the location you want Word to start with and click OK.

For Excel you go to Tools, Options and then the General tab. It looks a little different but works the same way except you have to manually type in the location instead of browsing to it.