Moving Quickly Between Directories

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 27, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

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...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Deleting Index Entries

When you construct an index you need to insert all sorts of index fields throughout your document. If you want to later ...

Discover More

Dragging to Clear Cells

If you want to get rid of the contents of a range of cells, a quick way to do it is with the Fill handle. Yes, you can ...

Discover More

Forcing a Final Blank Page

When printing or combining documents, you may need to worry about how many pages are in the documents. This tip provides ...

Discover More

Comprehensive VBA Guide Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the language used for writing macros in all Office programs. This complete guide shows both professionals and novices how to master VBA in order to customize the entire Office suite for their needs. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2010 today!

More WordTips (menu)

Working with E-mailed Documents

Ding! You've got mail. That mail has a Word document attached to it. Before you rush off and open that document, take a ...

Discover More

Saving Portions of Files

Want to save snippets from a document into individual files? There are a couple of easy ways to achieve this goal, as ...

Discover More

Picking Up in the Last Document Edited

Sometimes it seems that we focus on getting a particular document hammered out to the exclusion of other documents we ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is six minus 5?

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.

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.