Help-need rename path to my pics-?reconnect??

[guccigirl]

Please help me prevent a disaster! I need to rename the path to "My Documents,My Pictures" becuz the path to its' folders & sub folders are too long for many filenames. It's causing me several problems saving things.

When I got this H.P. PC that I'm using, it automatically made the path to my documents:
C:\Documents and Settings\HP_Administrator\My Documents\My Pictures

I want to try to see if I can get all my photos (as well as lots & lots of digital scrapbooking elements which are also under the same path) to just be under:
C:\Documents and Settings\My Documents\My Pictures (in other words, just remove the "HP_Administrator". But what I don't want, is to to have to go thru a full reconnect in PSE 5.0 with all my photos & digital elements. I'm terrified that some may not reconnect, due to many past, bad experiences with reconnecting. (And I'm hoping it won't cause any trouble with the H.P. PC either???!!!:eek: )

I want to know the best way to accomplish this & also, where (in windows explorer, in PSE...) it should be performed in order to have the least (hopefully none!:rolleyes: ) problems with any PSE 5.0 reconnecting everything. Can any1 plz help me?? Thanks.:)

P.S. Am I going to have to go thru this all again when I install my external hard drive? I want to move all photos & elements over there when it gets put in. Will the procedure be the same?? Thanks again.

[guccigirl]

bumping up 4 help plz

[Ward Grant]

If you have Elements 5.0, you should be able to use the visual Drag and Drop to move the pictures where you want them.
I would create the folder first in Window and then grab the pictures you want and move them. You can change the View in the lower left corner to Folder View. I would go slowly and move one or two folders to be sure all goes well.
Afterwards, I would check your preferences and be sure you point to the new path for future pictures you add.
Please post back if you have any questions.

[TonyW]

I'm curious as to what problems you're running into as that's the standard path for user accounts and I suspect you would run into problems if you drop the user piece - you can change it in Windows (Control Panel, User Accounts to something shorter (mine is Tony :) ) I wouldn't have thought that would upset Elements although I haven't tried.

The full path leads to the same place as what you see in the Start Menu as My Documents or in Windows Explorer under Desktop as My Documents so you should hardly ever need to get to it using the full path name.

That being said I'm no XP expert and I don't have a lot of different user accounts on my computers. Maybe a Windows expert can help. But I wouldn't go messing with path names until you're sure what you're doing.

Tony

[genevh]

The HP_Administrator is the default user account created when your machine was initially set up by HP. You cannot just delete it out of that path name as it will "break" that account and the PC won't be able to find your documents, etc. any more. Even if you create a new account, you will see that account name in the path rather than HP_Administrator, so you're kind of stuck in that regards. As for adding an external hard drive, it will just show up as another drive under "My Computer", as the next available drive letter. The good news there is that it will be nice and clean (no clutter) at least for awhile and you can create your folders however you want to. As for actually moving the files, check this out on the Adobe website:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=333521


Good luck! :)