How To Change The Default Location For Saving Microsoft Word Documents

Over the weekend I had a second hard drive installed in My Computer. I am a heavy Microsoft Word 2003 user and I create lots of Word documents for my business. The documents size can vary and I want to change the default location for saving to a folder on the new hard drive. How can I permanently change the location in Word?

By default Microsoft Office versions for Word saves documents to your My Documents folder (C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents) on Windows XP and to the Documents folder on Windows Vista (C:\User\Owner|Documents).

To change the default location for saving documents in Office version XP (2002) and 2003, open Word and click on Tools \ Options…

While one would think changing the setting would be found in the Save tab, it is actually found in the File Locations tab (circled).

After clicking on the File Locations tab, highlight Documents under File types: (arrow in screen shot above) then click the modify button. In the Modify Location window, navigate to a folder or new hard drive location where you want Word to save all documents to, and click OK,

Click OK again to close the Options window.
If you set up Microsoft Word to create automatic backup document copies, Word will also create the backup copies to the new location.