How to move program folders to new location (default is My Documents)

Programs that I have installed on my computer (mostly games) have automatically made their own folders, mainly in My Documents, but also in My Pictures and My Videos. When I move these folders regularly, the program just makes a new one in the previous location when I start it again. So, my question is: how do I move these folders permanently (without losing any information)? Below is a screenshot of the folders in My Documents that I would like to move.

Also, here is a screenshot of what files are in the folder "Electronic Arts> The Sims 3" as an example.

Thanks for your help!

Why are programs installing to Documents folder. I've never had a Program install anywhere except to the Program Files which is where WIn7 always directs them. Did you redirect them elsewhere? I would not do that.

Visual Studio?

It's a common flaw in many programs to store their internal data in "my documents" and similar paths, thus polluting them and making it difficult to use for its original purpose: to store user-generated work.

Many games store their saves there, as well as Visual Studio and some others too (interesting enough, showing us how MS breaks their own rules), and deleting or moving them will only mean that such programs will fail to find their settings/saves.
The worst of that is that they're almost never configurable, but hardcoded into each game.

One option would be to make a junction or symlink to take its place in "my documents" while moving the real content out of the way. This makes the data easily accessible where you most want it, but still leaves the clutter in the folder.

My personal choice due to these problems and a few others is to simply abandon "my documents" to be bloated by anyone and store my data in another place, out of any predefined system paths.

whs said:

Check in Properties of the folders whether they have a Location tab. That would be the only other way to move them - other than the proposed regedit. Any other attempt to move them will break the path and the games will not find them.

None of the folders have a location tab. Thanks anyways for the advice.