SOLVED: How to Move PUBLIC Folder In Windows 10

If you need to add more space to your computer, one way to do this is to add a second disk. The problem then becomes what should you move to that disk. In home theaters and other PC’s with lots of shared storage it is common practice to move the PUBLIC folders. However, this is not as easy as moving other profile folders, but it is not that difficult.

HOW TO MOVE PUBLIC FOLDERS:

COPY (don’t MOVE) the C:\USERS\PUBLIC folder to a different disk or partition
Click the START button and type REGEDIT (not case sensitive) and press enter
Expand HKLM > SOFTWARE > MICROSOFT > WINDOWS NT > CURRENT VERSION > PROFILE LIST
Double click on PUBLIC
Correct the path
Reboot the PC
Go to C:\USERS\PUBLIC and delete everything

CLEAN UP:

The remaining clean up is optional:

Go to c:\USERS
Right click on PUBLIC and select SECURITY
Click ADVANCED
Click CHANGE on OWNER and set it to you (rather than system)
Then delete C:\USERS\PUBLIC
Go to your new PUBLIC folder (in the video below this is E:\PUBLIC)
Right click on PUBLIC and select the SHARING TAB then the ADVANCED SHARING button
Click SHARE THIS FOLDER (it should show PUBLIC, if it shows PUBLIC2, then your original C:\USERS\PUBLIC is still being shared and you should remove it)
Click PERMISSIONS and set EVERYONE FULL CONTROL then OK
Click the SECURITY tab and click EDIT and set whatever security you want (in my case, I used EVERYONE FULL CONTROL) and click OK
From a DIFFERENT computer on the network launch FILE EXPLORER then NETWORK and try to find your new share OR from FILE EXPLORER, type \\<hostname>\public (i.e. \\theater4\public) and make sure it comes up

Enjoy

11 Comments

mybitsnbobs · April 27, 2022 at 3:53 am

HI thread.. my c: drive was overflowing with files, so I tried this. I’ve followed all of the instructions and put the massive public docs folder on an external SSD (it’s mostly music software instruments & sound-packs like kontakt). When I load up a track in my DAW it’s asking me to find everything manually (like 30,000 samples) I have added the new location as a searchable location in the DAW. my question is >>> do I have the correct drive path in REGEDIT ? E:\Users\Public

Thanks

Ian Matthews · May 5, 2022 at 9:20 pm

Hi Christos; What is your DAW?

Hipokondriak · March 5, 2022 at 9:39 am

back in the day of windows xp, i could click on my user name and move all my folders in one fell swoop. is there any way of doing that in win11?

Ian Matthews · March 9, 2022 at 7:36 pm

Hi Hipokondriak;

Are you referring to C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\ ?

David Costello · September 17, 2021 at 1:36 am

Thanks for this – I have a number of win 7 PC’s that the library folder on the machines hard drive is defaulting to C:\Users\Public\Documents – can this be changed with regedit?

Ian Matthews · September 18, 2021 at 9:11 am

Hi David;

I am sure you can relocated the pointer but I do not know the reg entry.

Eric · December 16, 2019 at 2:56 am

Thanks Bill for the link command. I did it too because I found out some of my softwares got the public documents path during install, put their files there, but keep using the original value instead of looking for the current one at each starts.

Tina Watkins · July 23, 2019 at 11:09 am

Nice, but I don’t have a HKLM option in regedit, they’re all HKEY

infiniteflightcommunity · October 2, 2019 at 1:30 am

HKLM is an acronym for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Ian Matthews · October 2, 2019 at 11:34 pm

Hi Kevin, Yes it is and HKCU is HKEY_CURRENT_USER

Thank you! · March 16, 2018 at 1:15 pm

Thank you for this. I followed your instructions and then added a tweak of my own. After deleting C:\USERS\PUBLIC i created a junction (mklink /J C:\USERS\PUBLIC mynewpublic) from C: to mynewlocation. Then i change the registry entry back

I don’t know if it was worth it but it has the advantage of PUBLIC still showing up in the C:\USERS directory which i like.

Bill L

Published by Ian Matthews on November 12, 2017November 12, 2017

HOW TO MOVE PUBLIC FOLDERS: