Move Documents, Pictures, Music, Desktop and Videos Folder in Windows 10

Last Updated on June 30, 2017

Since Windows 7, your documents, videos, pictures, and music have been stored in your USERPROFILE folder. You can find the PATH for this by typing %USERPROFILE% in the Windows Run box.

move-documents-pictures-music-desktop-videos-folder-windows-10

By default, all these files are stored at a location on your C:/ drive. If you have got a small C:/ drive since a lot of us use SSDs these days, chances are you might want to move these files to your main storage drive.

To find the actual location of your personal files folder, you can use the following commands in the Windows Run box.

Documents: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\

Pictures: %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\

Videos: %USERPROFILE%\Videos\

Music: %USERPROFILE%\Music\

To access these locations, press Windows + R to open Run and enter these locations.

Upon looking these files, you’ll notice that all of them are in your C:\ drive as I mentioned above. The good thing is that you can move these files to other locations on your drive, or to another drive altogether.

In this post, I’ll write the steps to move the Pictures folder. You can follow the same procedure to move others.

  • Press Windows + R to open the Run box.
  • Type %USERPROFILE% and press Enter. This will take you to your personal profile folder in Windows. This should look something like C:\Users\<your_username>.
  • Right-click on the Pictures folder and go to Properties.
  • In the Properties box, click on the Location tab. You’ll see the default location of the Pictures folder on your PC. It should be C:\Users\<your_username>\Pictures.
  • Click on the  button and select the location which you want your Pictures to be stored at.
  • After selecting the appropriate folder, click on Apply and OK.

That’s it. Now, Windows will automatically move all the images in your Pictures folder to your selected location. The biggest benefit of doing this is that since your personal files are not on the C:\ drive, formatting your PC won’t remove them. You can always access them even after resetting your PC fully.

Photo of author

Written by Utkarsh

Utkarsh Bhatt is a certified tech expert and software engineer for a Fortune 500 Company. He was born in 1995, making him one of the oldest members of the team at EFX. Utkarsh loves solving technical issues and is always the first to jump on any problem that needs solving. When he’s not coding or debugging, he enjoys playing video games (especially Super Smash Bros.) and watching cartoons.

Share on:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.