Default File Open Location

Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast, Episode 2179: The Default Open Folder.

Hey, welcome back to MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen. Today, really easy but super useful one. I was doing a seminar in Kent, Ohio, and someone came up and said, "Hey, you know, we're entering budget season, and for the next couple months we're going to be doing all of our work in the sequel and budgets folder. Can I have Excel automatically default to that folder when I go to file open?" Alright.

And what you have to do is go to File, and then Options, and then Save-- File, Options, and Save. And go see if there's a setting here for Default File Location, and right now it's pointing to my Documents folder. So let's try this, let's see what happens, right here. We'll just do File Close or File Exit, and I will fire up Excel and we'll go to File, Open, Browse, and you see that we start in the Documents folder like that. Alright.

Let's go into File, Options, and Save, we'll change to C:/Budgets. Click OK. Now, File Exit and then fire up Excel again, and then Ctrl+O for open, Browse, and now we're starting directly in the Budgets folder. Cool, cool trick, super easy-- will save you some time on that initial file open of the day.

Well, tons of tricks like this is my book, Power Excel with MrExcel, the 2017 Edition. Click the "I" in the top right-hand corner for more information.

Today's question from Kent, Ohio: Is there a way to control the default file location? Go to File, Option, Save, and change the default file location. When they asked this question, I didn't quite know the answer; but once I found the answer, and then changed my default folder, it actually is cool how just those few clicks of not having to navigate to the right folder each day, is a huge time-saver, assuming you're doing all your work in one folder. And then a couple months from now, when the budget season is over, you can switch over to some other folder as your default file.

I want to thank you for stopping by, I'lll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.