By Jim Boyce

Microsoft Windows 2000 introduced a new place to store your documents — the My Documents folder. Microsoft Windows XP carries on the My Documents tradition. The integration of the My Documents folder into the Windows interface is a major advantage to using My Documents rather than another folder structure. You'll find My Documents in the Open and Save dialog boxes in Windows and Office programs, on the desktop, and in several other locations, making it very easy to get quick access to the documents stored there.

As handy as My Documents is, you can make it even better. Read on to learn how.

Organize My Documents by using subfolders

If you dump all of your documents into the My Documents folder without any additional organization, you'll eventually lose most of the benefit that this folder gives you. Instead, add subfolders to My Documents that you can use to organize your documents.

Take into account the way that you work to decide what types of folders to create. For example, if you work on projects for several clients, consider creating a subfolder for each client. Or you might organize My Documents along more general lines. For example, a teacher might use subfolders named Lesson Plans, Tests, Grade Sheets, Syllabi, and so on, to organize My Documents. Each of those subfolders could have subfolders of its own to further organize documents.

Whatever folder scheme you choose, creating folders is easy:

1. On the Start menu or on your desktop, click My Documents to open the My Documents folder.
2. In My Documents, right-click a blank area in a folder window, point to New, and then click Folder.
3. Type a new name for the folder, and then click outside the text field.

Access documents and folders faster by using shortcuts

Windows XP makes it easier to work with local folders, to open shared folders on network computers, and to search for documents. Even so, you can further improve on these capabilities and make it even easier to open documents, move and copy files, and browse to shared resources. Folder shortcuts are good tools that you can use to simplify your day.

Think of a folder shortcut as an icon that points to a folder located in a place other than where the icon is located. For example, you might create a shortcut on your desktop to a folder on a network server. Rather than hunt through multiple levels of folders in My Network Places to find the folder, you can quickly open the folder by clicking the shortcut.

You can create folder shortcuts in locations other than your desktop. For example, why not create folder shortcuts in My Documents so that you have quick and easy access to network folders and other local folders as well as to the folders and documents in My Documents?

Windows treats these shortcuts as files rather than as folders when it sorts and displays the contents of a folder. So assume that you create a shortcut in My Documents named Downloads, which points to a folder on a network share. Say that My Documents also contains subfolders named Daily Reports and Express Orders. The Downloads shortcut won't be sorted between those two shortcuts. Instead, that shortcut will be sorted among your documents, which are alphabetically sorted after your folders.

How can you work around this minor sorting problem? Create a folder in My Documents named My Shortcuts (or whatever you prefer), and create your shortcuts in that folder. Then you'll be able to locate your shortcuts easily.

It's easy to create a shortcut:

1. Open the folder in which you want to create the shortcut.
2. In the folder, right-click a blank area in the folder window, point to New, and then click Shortcut to start the Create Shortcut wizard.

   

3. Type the path to the folder or click Browse to browse to the folder, click it, and then click Next.
4. Type a name for the shortcut (the name will appear under the shortcut icon), and then click Finish.

You can also create folder shortcuts by using the drag-and-drop feature:

1. Open the folder containing the target for the shortcut.
2. Use the right mouse button to drag the target to the folder where you want the shortcut created. When you release the right mouse button, a menu will appear.
3. On this menu, click Create Shortcut(s) Here to create the shortcut.

Organize the My Places bar in your Office programs

From within any Office program, you can save documents directly to various places, including My Documents. Any Open or Save dialog box contains the My Places bar (on the left side of the dialog boxes), which lists all folders to which documents can be saved.

You can easily add and remove destinations on the My Places bar. Here's how:

1. In an Office program, click Open on the File menu.
2. In the Open dialog box, browse to and open the folder you want to add to the My Places bar.
3. On the Tools menu, click Add to "My Places".



4. To remove an icon, right-click the icon and click Remove on the shortcut menu.

To change the order of the icons on the My Places bar, right-click an icon and click Move Up or Move Down on the shortcut menu.

Note that Office Open and Save dialog boxes also have a Views button on the menu bar that you can use to choose a view of folder contents (thumbnails, tiles, icons, and so on).

About the author   Jim Boyce has written more than 50 books about computers and technology, many of them about the Microsoft Office System. He regularly contributes to several online sites and publications. His latest book is Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Inside Out, which is available from Microsoft Learning.