Windows 7: two "my documents"

It seems as though i have two "my documents."

- 1 under DOCUMENTS LIBRARY, with today's date.

- A 2nd under DOCUMENTS LIBRARY then MICROSOFT, then "my documents" dated 3/25/10.

Should i delete the 2nd one?

thanks,



Dennis

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Leave it unless its causing a problem.

The Library documents is just a storage area that points to your My Documents folder. I'm not sure what you mean by a second My Documents Library? Maybe you should post a screen shot of the problem.

Are there any important documents in the 2nd folder? Before blindly deleting something from your system, check what's there first, might be something important or worth keeping. If it's empty then you could probably safely delete it but then empty folders don't use much disk space so it becomes a moot point.

dont empty it , leave well alone , its supposed to be there its normal and all is well

you didnt by any chance check the "show hidden files and folders" option in the file menu did you?

i cant remember why its there or whats its for but i do remember from these very forums that it is supposed to be there

By default I believe the various libraries have "two" locations set. Documents for example has C:\Users\(your user name)\Documents and C:\Users\Public\Documents. So one might think they have two Documents folders. Is that maybe what you are seeing?

This can happen when you relocate 'My Documents'. What is happening is that you may have a program that points to My Documents but does not know that the folder was moved so it re-creates it in the location that originally existed at one point or it is just badly written and assumes that it will always be in the default location which normally is at C:\Users\User Name\My Documents. This also applies to the other User folders such as My Pictures, Downloads, Links etc...

Just by opening this extra folder and see what is there, you will be probably able to figure out which is the program that is doing this. In most cases you should then be able to go and edit the settings for that particular program and change the path to point to the correct location.

If this extra 'My Documents' or any other folder such as 'My Pictures' folder is empty, you can deleted it.

Okay.
I will write out what each file says:
Documents Library
Includes: 2 Locations

those 2 locations are:

My documents (Default)
Public documents

What are "Public Documents" and do I need two locations? I think that is where the confusion is. I never had this problem with XP.

Thanks,

Dennis

That's normal, you can remove it if you want. Libraries just point to locations that are already there.

Yes, thats normal for Windows 7. XP didn't use libraries and only referenced your personal my documents folder. I personally remove all the public folders from my individual libraries. I never ever use them so I just remove the clutter.