Moving Quickly Between Directories

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 27, 2020)

If you work with quite a few Word documents at the same time, it is not unusual to need to change directories frequently when opening files. This can involve quite a bit of clicking or typing, depending on whether you rely on the keyboard or the mouse. If you prefer to use the keyboard and you need to change directories a lot, here is an approach that may save you some time and effort.

Press Ctrl+O to display the Open dialog box. The insertion point is in the File Name field.
Type the file paths that you frequently use, presenting Enter after each one.

This may not seem like much, but in the future when you need to switch to a directory, you simply press Ctrl+O and then repeatedly press the Down Arrow until you see the directory you want. Press Enter, and you are there!

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (557) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is four more than 9?

2015-07-25 11:43:50

Fred Burg

If one has folders set up on a project basis, then you may want to switch to folders in an Open dialogue when in Word or in Excel or any other program. It's unclear if this tip would provide the file path info if you're in Excel if it was entered in Word. So what I do is create shortcuts in folders that allow me to easily switch to other commonly used folder. So if I'm in an Open dialogue in Word, I can easily switch to another folder by clicking the shortcut.

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