Techie Buzz. Know Your Technology Head On.

Windows users might be quite familiar with File Dialogs that pop up every time you create a new file, open a new file or save a new file. In every File Dialog you can see places that you can save the files to in the left side just by clicking on it. These locations are called Places Bar and contain folders which are easily accessible.

What should be easily accessible is not decided by you and its a default behavior to show recent documents, desktop, my documents, my computer and my network places in the places bar. If you want to save the files in a different locations, you will have to navigate to that folder. What if you can easily add your favorite folder to the places bar by removing things that you don’t require.

For example I create a lot of screen shots for the blog and while saving it I have to navigate to the picture folder. It would be great to have the custom folder in the places bar as it would help me save and open files faster.

Is it possible?

It is very possible and can be done with relative ease. Check the screen shot below to see new Places Bar which has new folders that I have added to make my life easier while saving files. I removed network locations and my recent documents as I never use it to save or open files.

How is it possible?

As you can see that changing the location is definitely possible, but how do you do it?

There are two ways you can do it in

1. Editing the registry
2. Using Group Policy Editor

Well you do not have to do those though. Techie Buzz always wants you to know your technology head on, so you can skip these cumbersome and geeky steps and still make your life easier.

PlacesBar Constructor is a nifty little software that will allow you to change the folders shown in the places bar without any efforts. When you run the software you it will show you the current places bar locations.

You can change any of the current location by selecting it from the drop down menu of click on set folder button to set your own folder. Once you click on the set folder button you will get a new window which will allow you to browse to the folder you want to add to the places bar like shown below.

Once you have customized you places bar you will see your changes in the main window.

Just click on accept and your changes will be saved to the registry without you having to edit it. After you have saved your changes to cross check just issue a file open or save dialog and you should see your favorite folders in the places bar now, check mine in the picture at the beginning of the post.

This definitely has helped me to make my life easier, I am planning to change my tag line to make your life easier LOL. What do you think about that?

Just a note that the following tool does not allow you to change default locations for Microsoft Office, to know how you can do that check out the post at California State University.

Download PlacesBar Constructor

Have you come across any other software that lets you do this? Do let me know through your comments.