Even though the post from freddycat is a couple of years old, it is still a viable solution. Here it is 2009 and ADE still will not allow moving the library from what I can see. Microsoft's Junction tool did the magic.

If users can circumvent the My Digital Editions directory location with symbolic links on Unix and Mac, and junctions on NTFS disks on Windows, why does Adobe still insists on generating artificial aggravations by "hard coding" the library location. Make it configurable and eliminate a small amount of frustrated users; small relative to those with more pressing application problems. It save money, time, and most importantly reputation.

This is a problem for me, too. I hate, hate, hate it when programs put things in my Documents folder without asking me and then won't let me move them. Please allow us to set the folder location.

+1 on annoyed with ADE for dictating locations. this kind of draconian drm is irritating and totally adequate justification for piracy.

I would like to add my voice to allowing users the ability to change the default directory for Digital Editions. I too find it frustrating that I cannot place documents where I want.

First, thank you for that straightforward and honest feedback. It has saved me a lot of time.

That said, I add my voice to all the others. I keep a folder in My Documents which is backed up online and synchronised between my laptop and PC. Ideally I would keep My Digital Editions in there rather than have to back them up separately.

I notice that this forum thread is quite old. I don't suppose it's something that has been changed? (I suspect not, as I am having exactly the same problems others have expressed...)

Same problem. Adobe please resolve. Useless for Peeps on corporate computers.

Just bought my first ereader Elonex 500, not the most sophisticated device .. no wifi...but it has colour display the reason I bought it preference to any other device. I also have the same complaint against Adobe. I tried the sysinternal fix suggested by a previous poster. Unfortunately I could nt get it to work, probably I got the syntax wrong.

However it seems I can save my books where ever I want to on my PC - in my case an external hd, so far I only see the png files and and annotations getting saved to Adobes default folder. This meets my needs since my only cornern is hard disc space. I cant see why this will impact on my use of the ereader itself.

I cant test this assumption but I cant see why those using corporate drives would not also be able to save their books to separate locations, with pngs and annotations staying on their corp drive.

I simply download to the location of my choice and then open with Adobe no complex manipulation involved.

This does not appear to interfere with the transfer of books/images/annotations to my ereader, other devices may not be so 'kind'.

Im happy to answer any questions if I can.

I second the motion.............

Please, have a look of what is written in the FAQ:

"How do I enable content portability?

The first time you run Digital Editions, you are prompted to authorize the application by entering an Adobe ID. If you don't have an Adobe ID, you are provided with a link to get one. Then, when you purchase an item online or borrow one from a library with Digital Editions, the item is automatically "tied" to your Adobe ID, rather than your computer. This way, you are free to move your items to up to six computers and six devices that have been authorized with Digital Editions."

What smith_lj said. The problem discussed in this thread isn't moving the content, it's moving the folder that Adobe Digital Editions creates. I want a preference that I can set so that I can choose where the folder with the content is located, please.

Guys,

Not sure if this is what you want but works for me.

My setup is:

C:\ - This is for Windows 7 (64bit) and programs.

D:\ - Optical Dirve

E:\My Documents - This is for my user files

F:\My Documents - This is a backup of the E drive files

Suggest you do backups before proceeding.

My eBooks downloads are located at E:\My Documents\My Digital Editions.  Being in this location it's easy to have a Robocopy script which simply copies from E to F drive.

Anyhow, as you have noticed, the default location is C:\Users\{NAME]\My Documents for the My Digital Editions.

Here's how I fixed it for me.

In Windows Explorer, go to Libraries --> Documents --> My Documents.

Right click on this and choose Properties.

Click on Location tab.

You will notice the entry currently reads "C:\Users\[NAME]\My Documents"

Click on the Move button.

Navigate to your document location which in my case is E:\My Documents

Click ok.

At this point you will get a warning asking if you want to copy files from the old location to the new location (hence the warning above about backing up).  Basically any folder and files in the old location (C Drive) will go to the new location (in my case E drive) so if you already have folders or files in the destination drive which are different, you may lose them when you say "Yes". Suggest you manually check and rename any folders that are similarly named in the destination so they aren't overwritten.

When you have finished, your library should show you your documents in the library.

Install Adobe Digital Editions.

In my case, since I had ePub files etc in E:\My Documents\My Digital Editions, when ADE started up, all my books were showing.

Any future purchases where I click on the download link and choose "Open with Adobe Digital Editions" get put in this directory and appear on my bookshelf.

Hope that helps guys.  Not sure what those that have corporate accounts can do, but perhaps that might help.

If your goal is to have the contents in My Digital Editions stored in another directory, I have a temporary solution.

1. Close Adobe Digital Editions, if the program is open.

2. Move My Digital Editions to the new location in Explorer, for example by selecting the directory, pressing Ctrl+X, opening the new location and pressing Ctrl+V. I used Books\My Digital Editions as my new directory. It is, however, okay to rename My Digital Editions to whatever you would like.

3. Open cmd by (Windows Vista/7) typing "cmd" in the start menu, right-clicking on the program cmd.exe and selecting "Run as administrator". If you have Windows XP, you can open cmd by holding the Windows key and pressing R (Run), entering "cmd" and then selecting "OK".

4. Go to My documents by entering the following command:

• cd "%userprofile%\Documents"

5. Make a link in My documents to the new directory, by entering the following command. Don't forget to change the second path to your new directory. (It should be absolute or relative to My documents.

• mklink /D "My Digital Editions" "Books\My Digital Editions"

6. Hide the link by entering the following command:

• attrib "My Digital Editions" /L +S +H

Good luck!

Anders Törnkvist

anderstornkvist.se

When you ask for help, it helps us to know what platform you're running,

what level your OS is at and a bunch of other things.  Don't blame the

messenger for your oversights.

============

Just curious.  Is ur G drive hard wired, or is it an external drive? 

I'm also wondering if I could move my whole ADE setup to my external drive, so that it boots and runs from there.....

Kudos to robervanbregt (#33) for providing the symbolic link pointer. I just want to suggest to all the frustrated people above that symbolic links can provide users with a tremendous amount of flexibility in where they store their stuff and can help with all the problems described above, and more, so people shouldn't ignore them just because they sound a bit tricky in facty they aren't too hard to manage at all.

For mac users there is a good little utility called SymbolicLinker that makes it really easy to create symbolic links with just a right click on the folder name. I recommend it. Something like symbolic links have been in windows since Vista - see #28 from Anders for the manual instructions; there is at least one tool (Symlinker) out there that attempts to make it easier, but I've never used it so windows users may have to shop around and experiment until they get one that they like.

Anyway, with symbolic links you can place your Digital Editions folder anywhere you like - secondar hard drive, usb drive, even on a network drive, or in your Dropbox folder. You will still need a symlink file sitting within your Documents folder called "Digital Editions" on a mac (or "My Digital Editions" on windows). That symlink file is tiny, and you can forget about it once you've put it in place.

So this helps if all you want to do is store your books and the index on perhaps a secondary harddrive, or a usb drive, or in Dropbox. However it seems that some people want to hide the Digital Editions folder away somewhere and file their actual books somewhere else. That can be done.

When you download a non-DMR ePub, download it straight to its final destination, and use the add item command in ADE. The file will stay exactly where you put it. No problem.

If you've bought a DRM-protected file, it will appear in the form of a .acsm file that ADE will run and download the ePub file, which will end up in the digital editions folder (which as we've already seen, can be placed anywhere on your system by using a symbolic link). However if you want to go one step further and put your ePub in a separate folder somewhere else, that does need a manual step. Copy the ePub and put the copy where you want it to be finally. This could take all of ten seconds, but if you want to make it quicker, create another symbolic link to the final destination of the file and place it inside the Digital Editions folder. Then you don't have to spend time navigating to the final destination: just copy the file, click on the link and paste the file. Then add the book to your library selecting the version in the new location, and delete the version in the old (Digital Editions) location. Not too hard, unless you download more than a few DRM books a day. (Note you can select multiple books at one time to add them, but I haven't found a way to delete them in a batch.)

True, users shouldn't have to do stuff like this - applications should be designed to meet users' needs, and ADE falls short in this area, as well as in others. But it's not actually a big deal to set up a manageable alternative system that allows you full choice where to put things. And right now I don't know of another application that can help me manage both DRM and non-DRM files the way I want to.

My approach is: on my desktop computer (where I usually buy things) I put everything in a single folder on Dropbox, symlinked from the mandatory Document folder location. I use that Dropbox folder also as my download folder for non-DRM files, so everything is together. On my laptop, I also use ATE but without symlinking to dropbox - I use the default folder location so that the manifest.xml files don't get mixed up, as I have a different but overlapping set of books in each library. However there are no actual books in the default folder on my laptop, they all stay in the Dropbox folder, of course.  This also makes adding a book to Aldiko in my Android very easy. I just navigate to the dropbox folder from the Aldiko file function, go to my digital editions folder and select the file for import.

BTW What's this in the ADE help page about using a USB drive or emailing the file to yourself?  Does anyone actually do that in the 21st century?

Here we are, five and a half years later, still waiting for ADE to do what so many users have asked for. And they wonder why people migrate to Kindle.