Talk:My Documents

Windows95
Erhmm... am I completely wrong about this, but isn't the My Documents folder "missing" in Windows 95? Every W95 system I've installed is missing it, anyways. IIRC, a complete installation of Office 97 (not Office 95) on a W95 machine created the familiar system folder. It was standard in Windows 98 and onwards, wasn't it? Not even the borked Windows 96 -- that never got further than Beta -- had it. There was, however, a semi-official "update" which installed a special My Documents folder on a W95 system, IIRC. It was merely an icon and a clever registry hack, wasn't it? Anyone? Tirolion 11:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, Windows 98 was the first to incorperate My Documents into the operating system. Office 97 did this as well with the addition of a registry key if installed on Windows 95, but it was only recognized by Office programs.  All other Windows programs, including the applets installed with the Windows 95 operating system, were otherwise unaware of it.

141.152.220.251 04:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

My Briefcase
Anyone else remember this folder in the Windows95 era? Might want to add it to the list.


 * More info is here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/win98/tips/mybrief.mspx?mfr=true 66.191.19.42 15:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Certainly existed in Win95/98. I think it is worth a listing.  Anyone know if it was still around in the ME era? Surv1v4l1st (Talk 00:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

It was certainly around in Windows 2000.

Which operating systems
In the opening paragraph, it says "On Microsoft Windows operating systems"; however, my question is which operating systems? Certainly this is in XP, but not before 95, or after Vista. I can't recall about 98, Me, NT. Whoever is knowledgeable about this, please specify this in the first paragraph, because certainly it is a dated statement.+mwtoews 21:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Document Library
Should we mention that My Documents was sort of replaced by a Document Library in Windows Vista? See Development of Windows Vista.

Navigation template?
I would have expected to see one of the navigation templates at the bottom of Microsoft Windows to be at the bottom of this article. I'd add one myself, but I can't decide which is the most appropriate. Perhaps Template:Windows Components, and add My Documents to it? --RealGrouchy (talk) 14:31, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

moving folders
It's weird that no Wikipedia contributor know that you don't even need the TweakUI to change the physical path of the My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, and all.

All you need to do is going to the true physical location of thoses folders and move them. Windows XP automatically ajust the physical path of it in the registry when doing this.

TulipVorlax - 11:05, 26 May 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.179.182.131 (talk)

Editors... do your homework!
This article, as well as most of the comments (singular exception: "Navigation template?") on this talk page are pathetically uninformed.

The version of the operating system has nothing to do with whether "My XYZ" is/was supported or not, or how they are made to appear to the user.

The reason for that is that "My XYZ" is not an operating system issue at all. Had this "article" been where it belongs ("Special Folders", or "Shell Folders" or something along those lines), it might have been obvious that "Shell Folders" have to do with the Windows shell, and not the operating system.

This is why the functions "SHGetSpecialFolderPath" and "SHGetSpecialFolderLocation" are prefixed with "SH". This is why the word "Explorer" appears in "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders".

Thus, its not surprising that "some" editors here stating that "My Documents" was present in Windows 95, and others disagree. Both are wrong because they're looking in the wrong place: Its the shell32.dll that originally didn't support it, but once IE and explorer became synonymous (IE 4/Project "Nashville"), updates to IE were in effect updates to the shell, and thats how the shell learned new tricks.

The reason why I am telling you this (instead of just redirecting the article to somewhere else) is that you folks need to learn to do your homework! At least read Wikipedia before you begin scribbling. :) -- 79.225.9.104 (talk) 19:32, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on My Documents. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070124043816/http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/657249b3-3e7e-4670-8dc7-8f695698dfe21033.mspx?mfr=true to http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/657249b3-3e7e-4670-8dc7-8f695698dfe21033.mspx?mfr=true

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This article is terrible in almost every aspect
The writing resembles more a high-school essay written overnight than an actual "Encyclopedia" article; The contents are mostly personal opinions; And half of the links are redundant (same page in multiple languages) while others are broken links to the Microsoft support site.

The author of the article literally "complains" that software developers use the directory "My Documents" for storing things like config files or save games and uses language that makes it seem as if Microsoft never intended for this directory to be used for that when in reality Microsoft themselves encouraged the use of this directory for that. As an example Windows versions prior to Windows 10 specifically had a designated directory for game saves (My Documents\My Games) inside "My Documents". Another example is Microsoft's defunct DRM system "Games for Windows Live" which used "My Documents" to store its settings.

As for applications there's too many reasons (and examples) of why it may be advantageous for users to have settings, configuration or profile files stored in an easy accessible and often cloud-synced location like "My Documents".

Remember that Windows is essentially the same operating system since XP bit it's features like setting, locations and purposes change every once in a while whenever Microsoft executives get bored (even changing more than once for the same OS as is the case with Windows 10).

There are multiple other issues with the actual content of the article but maybe there's no point discussing that when the article as a whole is just badly written as some sort of message board rant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GuiF (talk • contribs) 14:09, 3 June 2020 (UTC)