As a dreadful Windows user, I constantly try to seek ways to boost my productivity and workflow. Applications like Dropbox and Belvedere make it more bearable, but when it comes to the saving, opening, and importing of files, Windows really sucks. In some applications, you get the neat fully fledged Explorer dialog, but in other applications like After Effects and Photoshop, you get the crummy Common Open File Dialog with the crappy Places Bar.
The Places Bar isn’t quite customizable, at least not easily. Today, we’re going to take a look at how to change the locations in the Places Bar for faster access to your important files. Apparently this doesn’t work for Basic and Home Editions of Vista or 7, so you’re going to need Business, Ultimate, or something of that nature. First, open your Start Menu and search for gpedit.msc. You then want to navigate to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Component, Windows Explorer, and finally Common Open File Dialog.
You want to right click on the Items displayed in Places Bar and hit Edit. Change the selection to Enabled and paste your paths into the boxes provided. Remember not to include quotations around your paths and remove any spaces! Hit Apply and OK when you’re done. Aside from paths, you can insert Common Shell folders:
- MyComputer
- MyDocuments
- MyPictures
- MyFavorites
- CommonDocuments
- CommonMusic
- CommonPictures
- Desktop
- ProgramFiles
- Recent
- shell:documentsLibrary
- shell:MusicLibrary
- shell:PicturesLibrary
- shell:VideosLibrary
Hopefully this neat little tweak will make file management a little bit easier for you. I find that this tweak really helps me a lot in terms of time savings. All your Mac users out there, stop laughing at us.
Robert Carreno says:
Haha, I never get distracted eith….*Pulls up Skyrim* Great tip! Never thought about customizing that. I hardly use the default folders on there. Thanks!
VinhSon Nguyen says:
You mean Starcraft
Thanks man, hopefully it’ll help you with your workflow. I never used the default folders either. Glad you liked the tutorial 
Snipersghillie says:
Nice tip. Thanks
VinhSon Nguyen says:
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for your feedback
Richard says:
Nice tutorial,
I was trying to make this work but it wouldn’t display “My Documents”. Looking for a solution led me here and to the answer – no spaces allowed. Thanks!
I DO know why this old stuff is the way it is. MS hated that it was hard to customize the “Places” bar in XP, so in Vista they added new APIs that allowed uers to drag stuff into that area in Explorer. Trouble is, each program has to be modified to access the new APIs, and many vendors acn’t be bothered. Even MS have not modified some of the more obscure utilities – try regedit, export and you’ll see, even in W7, it’s the old places bar!
As far as I can see, Adobe have not updated either, so this is a case where MS have long fixed an irritation but the software houses are behind. And of course everyone blames MS. Never mind…
Thanks.
VinhSon Nguyen says:
Glad the article helped!
Ah, that does make a lot of sense as most applications do allow customization of the Place bar. Thanks for your input and info as well