Quickly Access Commonly Used Folders

A great way to increase your productivity is to make doing those thing you do most often easier to do. Here's a simple way to make all your commonly accessed folders more easily accessible.

As a web and software developer, there are always folders that I go to often, such as inetpub/wwwroot, or the mapped drive on our network where we store all our licensed images. I am also always in and out of my "downloads" folder - where I save all the stuff I download from the internet. Every time I wanted to go to one of these folders, I had to browse through Explorer to get to it, which gets old after a while.

I've tried several hacks to simplify accessing these folders, but they either limited where I could easily access the folders from, or the process of adding the shortcut was too complicated and not worth the effort every time I wanted to add a shortcut to a folder. Eventually I came up with my own solution. I realized a really easy way to make any folder easily accessible from almost any dialog.


You see, Windows has made a point of making access to your "My Documents" folder very simple. From anywhere you can hit Win+E to open Windows Explorer, and then you're just a click or keystroke away from My Documents. Basically every Browse dialog has My Documents as a quick link in the sidebar, and if not it has it in the drive selection dropdown. However, it's not exactly practical to move all of our commonly used folders into My Documents. Even if we did, chances are that we have a bunch of other folders in My Documents that we'd still have to sift through to find our commonly accessed folder.

The solution? Make a shortcut (.lnk) file in My Documents that points to the folder(s) you commonly access, beginning the shortcut's name with an underscore (_). Optionally, you can also customize this shortcut's icon to be a better visual representation of your folder's purpose.

Double-clicking this shortcut will cause Explorer or the file browser to navigate to that folder. You want to start the name of the file with an underscore so it appears among the first items in your My Documents folder. Here's a breakdown of exactly how to do this. In my example, I'm using the Downloads folder on my D: drive.

1. In Explorer, browse to the folder you want to make a shortcut to.
2. Right-click on the folder and select Create Shortcut.
3. A new file called "Shortcut to your folder name.lnk" will be created. Rename that shortcut to "_your folder name.lnk" (in our example this would be _Downloads.lnk. Note: If the filename doesn't say .lnk, this is just because of your settings and you should instead name the file "_your folder name", without the .lnk.)
4. Take your new shortcut and move it to My Documents.
5. Optionally, you can change the icon that appears for your shortcut by right-clicking on it, selecting Properties, then clicking the Change Icon button and selecting a more appropriate icon.

Repeat these steps for any folder you want to make more easily accessible. To get to your favorite folders just browse to My Documents then double-click on any of your shortcuts. You'll be taken directly to that folder. If you prefer, you could instead put these icons on your Desktop. Then, you could access them anytime by hitting Win+D on your keyboard. However, I don't like having lots of things on my desktop so I prefer the My Documents.

I hope this tip helps add to your productivity.

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