My Documents folder inadvertently renamed

Either through my own fault or when importing my XP data into Win7 via the Windows 7 Easy Transfer Utility, I now have a C:\user\john\documents folder instead of a C:\user\john\My Documents folder (I still have the My Documents junction point). The "Documents" folder does not have a Location tab on its properties sheet and it will not allow a rename to "My Documents" which it says already exists. I have all my documents in this folder but things like Office that are looking for My Documents say that it is missing.
Also, the My Pictures, My Videos, and My Music links that were inside the My Documents folder are gone.
Is there any way to get the My Documents alias back on this folder and restore that to be pointing to Location C:\users\john\documents? I realize that I could probably just create a new user but then I'd have to move all of the AppData and other files which would be a pain.

jmbissell said:

Either through my own fault or when importing my XP data into Win7 via the Windows 7 Easy Transfer Utility, I now have a C:\user\john\documents folder instead of a C:\user\john\My Documents folder (I still have the My Documents junction point). The "Documents" folder does not have a Location tab on its properties sheet and it will not allow a rename to "My Documents" which it says already exists. I have all my documents in this folder but things like Office that are looking for My Documents say that it is missing.
Also, the My Pictures, My Videos, and My Music links that were inside the My Documents folder are gone.
Is there any way to get the My Documents alias back on this folder and restore that to be pointing to Location C:\users\john\documents? I realize that I could probably just create a new user but then I'd have to move all of the AppData and other files which would be a pain.

wouldnt it be easier to redirect office and the other programs that need the path ?

I'd prefer to have things the way Windows 7 sets them up to maintain consistency across users and to make it easier to move files between computers.
Seems like this ought to be a trivial fix but I'm baffled.

I can rename the folder but when I try to create a new My Documents, it tells me that the folder already exists and do I want to merge it with the other one (which is actually the junction point My Documents). Even if I say Yes, nothing happens.
I'm wondering if I can first delete the My Documents junction point, rename Documents to My Documents, and then recreate the junction point.

Brink said:

Hello John, and welcome to Seven Forums.

This should help: :)

• Backup anything that you do not want to lose in the folder.
• Delete it and any other instance of the "My Documents" folder.
• Restore the default location of the "My Documents" folder.
• Restart the computer. You may need to restart a few times before "My Documents" is restored.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I must be missing something here. After I delete the My Documents folder it doesn't show up in the list of things I can restore to their default locations. I finally got so frustrated w/ this that I saved off the information, deleted the account, and added the user back as a new account. Caused a lot of (re)setup of things that had already been working but them's the breaks. Thanks for your help!

The one thing you can't seem to do is to rename it back to My Documents. And some of my legacy apps (like Office XP/2002) seemed to fail when I would click on the My Documents button.