Windows XP and Tweak UI - Manage Favorite Places to Open/Save Files

Normally, when Windows XP applications show an open or save dialog box, on the left side of the box is a Places Bar, a list of favorite places to open or save files from or to, plus a list of top-level locations on your computer. These may be places such as the Desktop, the "My Documents" folder, "My Computer", etc. While these locations are nice for many users, what if you have a "c:\downloads" folder where you save many files transferred from the Internet, or a "c:\media" folder where you save multimedia files? You can change the list in the Places Bar by doing the following with Tweak UI:

1) Start Tweak UI (read the tips in MalekTips for downloading / installation information)

2) Click the "Common Dialogs" link to expand it.

3) Click "Places Bar".

4) Select "Custom places bar".

5) Now, choose your favorite places in each of the five pull-downs that represent places on the Places bar. Either choose one of the defaults such as "My Computer", "My Documents", etc., or type in the path to a favorite folder, such as "c:\downloads" or "c:\media".

6) When you are done, press "OK" to close Tweak UI.

To test this out, run Notepad, Microsoft Word, etc., and open a file. You should see your changes in the "Open" dialog box. Note that this tip may not affect every single Windows XP application, though it should work on a majority of them.