Lots of Designers use Mac as their work machine, and lots of designers are a bit clean freak like me. Therefore, it’s really hard to swallow when Microsoft try to put an useless “Microsoft User Data” Folder in Documents Folder.(Usually it’s where we put our projects in).
Therefore, today I decided to research for the solution on this. (to fix this annoying problem since years ago)
This is the window you usually see when you have Microsoft 2008 or 2004 installed. The “Microsoft User Data” Folder will always be there no matter how many times you have removed it. It will be automatically recreated every time you open an Microsoft product on your mac. It’s VERY VERY annoying.
Thankfully, this is the solution. Simply move “Microsoft User Data” folder from “Documents” to Users/ (YOUR USER NAME)/Library/Preferences/
DONE!! You will never see that annoying folder again in your Documents Folder. Thank god. :p
William
April 20, 2010 at 5:25pmthank you so much i have wanted to get that annoying thing out for years.
JF
April 28, 2010 at 1:45amDear Danny Chang,
Thank you so much for posting such a valuable tip. Enough is enough with Microsoft intrusive practices. The Documents folder belongs to the user, not to Microsoft. I have no choice but to use their products because my institution cannot get rid of them. The least they could do as they enter the Mac users world is to have some respect for the prevailing practices within that community.
Again, thank you so much. Wishing you good luck with your studies.
JF
NA
May 29, 2010 at 6:56pmThank you so much… I would have given up researching the fix for this, if I hadn’t found your site!
tk
June 28, 2010 at 6:06amNice! – 100 times better than the other hits you might see for this problem
David
October 14, 2010 at 6:48pmFinally!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! fckin dumb asseholes of microsoft.
Remko
November 17, 2010 at 1:56amYou are my hero! Thank you!
Raj
December 13, 2010 at 4:04amWorked like a charm on my MBP and Office 2011. Thanks
martina
January 22, 2011 at 3:51pmTried on MBP with Office 2011, but after using messenger it comes back
Nujad
January 22, 2011 at 6:49pmI can not thank you enough for solving this annoying problem that I’ve dealt with for years! My CDO (OCD in alphabetical order) couldn’t handle it!
Lui
January 29, 2011 at 12:28pmdanny,
i never would drop a single line in a forum ever – this tip however solves a bummer !
I can do little but add my thankfulness to the already astonishingly long list.
Joao Vicente Dornas
January 29, 2011 at 2:49pmThank you for your help. It was really very annoying.
Mikem
February 6, 2011 at 8:21amWell sadly it doesn’t seem to be working here ;(
Moved it, reopened messenger and guess what…
tomm174
March 1, 2013 at 11:08amUninstall messenger ;->
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-alternative-chat-applications-for-msn-on-mac-os-x/
Lanselau
February 13, 2011 at 5:21pmthank you so much!! yes, it was freaking annoying! pfff!
Francisco Suero
February 24, 2011 at 4:30amBig Thanks You!!!
It`s incredible but really works!
Thanks
Annette
April 16, 2011 at 9:11pmThank you Danny Chang!!! That folder has annoyed me beyond all belief. You are my hero!
Martin
May 9, 2011 at 7:31pmCapo!, si funciona. Ahhhh gracias a dios.
Maek
May 12, 2011 at 11:33amThis works for the document creation tools in office but not for messenger or communicator.
CK
June 17, 2011 at 8:17amThank you. Can’t believe the sneaky MS guys to put their annoying useless stupid crap folders into the documents folder reserved for the user!!!! What were they thinking?
Soleil Golden
June 23, 2011 at 9:04amYou rock. Thank you so much for this tip.
Sal S
June 24, 2011 at 9:11pmThank you! Written in such a witty way, but so so helpful.
k
July 13, 2011 at 5:01amcool! thanks a lot!
Francesca
August 3, 2011 at 8:28amTHANK YOU!
Jingle Jang
August 8, 2011 at 11:26amDoes this work with Mac OS X Lion?
Scott
August 11, 2011 at 7:47pmHas anyone else had an issue with Spotlight not showing Outlook information after doing this?
Mark
August 16, 2011 at 12:19pmThank you. Freakin life saver. I hate microsoft!
Jamie
August 17, 2011 at 10:40amoh god thank you so much.
Dr. Jesus
August 17, 2011 at 6:33pmThank you so much for this. One of the principal reasons that I switched to a Mac was because I got tired of the entire system being a giant mess. I had to install Office 2011 and naturally it had explosive diarrhea all over my machine. I’ve been working for days to clean it up and your tip was extremely helpful.
Chris
August 28, 2011 at 10:51amThanks!
When will this ******* company finally retain to best practices?
xell
September 5, 2011 at 9:56amThanks very much! It really helps and is far far better that other solutions.
Sarah
September 5, 2011 at 9:32pmThankyou so much! Very appreciated
aksival
September 7, 2011 at 6:45amAnother option (from the terminal):
chflags hidden ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data
Permanently removing (just moving) the ‘Microsoft User Data’ folder | Malte Koeditz
September 24, 2011 at 2:12pm[...] you to Danny Chang for his article on moving the Microsoft User Data folder and to OSX daily for their article on showing the users library folder in OSX Lion. Tagged with: [...]
diogo
October 2, 2011 at 6:35amHiding the folder is an option (using setflag -a V is also another option). But pretty much that doesn’t remove the fact that the folder should be at Preferences instead of documents. Autodesk does the same with its folders, adding extra folders on Documents and User folder, but with Autodesk the only option is to hide the folder. at least Microsoft User Data can still be moved.
For Mac OSX Lion it does work, but remember that on Lion the Library Folder of the User directory has been hidden on Finder, so to get access to the {User Folder}/Library/Preferences you need to use Shift+Cmd+G and Type “~/Library/Preferences” and then copy the folder to there.
Aulendil
October 10, 2011 at 7:22amHi Diogo,
Does moving the thing actually work in OS X Lion, or is it merely an assumption that it would?
Thanks
JohnnyCaraveo
November 1, 2011 at 2:24pmThank YOU!
Also thanks to Diogo #32 for posting the tip about the hidden folder in Lion!
Seth Meyers
December 1, 2011 at 11:32pmThank you! May clutter be vanquished one blog post at a time.
Marfil
December 8, 2011 at 6:21pmWorks in other languages too. In my case Spanish.
Jeff
December 30, 2011 at 2:52pmIt showed up again (using Lion). Arghhh!
Jeff
December 30, 2011 at 2:56pmThink I fixed it. Thanks #32
Neto
January 28, 2012 at 8:29amExcelent!!!
Harry
March 8, 2012 at 2:48pmJust to make it an even 40. Thanks!
MS trying to ruin user experiences for Macs too. Leave the shi**y user experiences on your own PCs!
Natalie
March 10, 2012 at 12:47amMerci! Gracias! Xie xie! THANK YOU!!!
Michael
March 12, 2012 at 9:36amThanks SOOOOOOOO much!
Luke
April 12, 2012 at 11:18amCheers big man
HobartTheSnide
April 19, 2012 at 11:08amClicking “Option”while viewing “Go” within Finder will also reveal the User Library on Lion, BTW.
Jasper
April 23, 2012 at 11:59amFINALY!
thank you so much i was about to kill my mac :@
does it stay on that place??
thanx a lot
Alex
May 10, 2012 at 3:01pmAn excellent solution, thank you so much!
ANAwan
May 22, 2012 at 2:27amThank you for easy solution. Much appriciated
Charles Blanchet
May 26, 2012 at 11:27amTHank you soooo much. I hated that folder.
Peter
June 8, 2012 at 9:05pmEspecially with Dropbox or Google Drive around, having this folder sync.. makes me freak out @_@.
Thanks for the tip. Love making my directories much more cleaner…
Joe
June 8, 2012 at 10:04pmThank you!
Francisco
June 30, 2012 at 10:39amsolution to hide and unhide any folder in lion, i used with all the microsolft folders
http://youtu.be/3QcrT8wdzqs
Abby
July 18, 2012 at 10:27pmHey,
This didn’t work for me. On my mac book pro (version Lion 10.7.4) in the ‘users’ folder, there is no ‘library’. There is a library on the hard drive with a preferences folder, and so i moved Microsoft user data folder there, with Word off. But when i restarted word, the MUD folder was in documents (there is still the previous MUD folder in library/preferences).
Ideas?
I’d be very grateful!
Stan
April 11, 2013 at 2:18amAbby,
See my solution, April 11, 2013 below.
Abby
July 18, 2012 at 10:35pmI found out! It doesn’t work in Mac’s latest version because there is no more library folder in ‘users’, so…
Open ‘Terminal’ (it’s an application all Macs have)
Type chflags hidden
Drag your folder into the Terminal window
Hit return
Hey presto! Gone!
Rafiki
July 20, 2012 at 11:20amAhhhhh THANK YOU!!!! (from one clean freak to another)
Raymond
September 5, 2012 at 4:20pmFor clean freaks designer seem to leave a lot of equally annoying “.DS_Store” files in directories. What about tidying them up too?
Elizabeth
October 29, 2012 at 11:29amTHANK YOU!
As the person above referenced, my OCD (CDO – ha! love it) could no handle this annoying intrusion.
Such a result!
Luca
November 15, 2012 at 1:18amWhat a relief not seeing anymore this permanent publicity you had to pay for ! Thanks a lot. Working with Office 2011 as well.
Joe
November 28, 2012 at 3:24pmEpic Win! The thing that drove me nuts was that spotlight searches in my “Documents” folder were swamped with emails. (If I wanted to find an email, I’d look in my email program!) Now, when I search in my Documents folder, I see Documents. Who would have thought?
Thanks, Danny!
McGen
December 2, 2012 at 5:29pmDanny, you are a legend. Plain and simple. Comment boards like this should be forwarded to Micro-gash as sound customer feedback.
@Abby and all others who cannot get this to work, ready the comments. Specifically @diogo
Leg-end!
Andrew
December 3, 2012 at 12:25pmBrilliant. Just brilliant!
Pete
January 14, 2013 at 6:51pmWell done, sir. Well done. Microsoft can kiss a fat baby’s ass.
Lola
January 21, 2013 at 12:33amThank you so much for taking the time to write this blog post! I’m a neat freak, too!
Ben
February 18, 2013 at 10:55pmbrilliant, thank u
David O
February 21, 2013 at 3:39amThank you SO much for sharing this. I’ve been wanting to get that crap out of my Documents folder for ages.
Thomas Reimer
February 28, 2013 at 9:07amOutlook runs fine after having moved its folder to the prefs folder, BUT…. the search function does not work in outlook when the user data folder is in the systems folder, which is a major bummer.
So very nice to get the mails results away from Spotlight results, but still need to find a solution so the search funtion works inside Outlook – any suggestions???
thanx
Majo
March 1, 2013 at 3:01pmI HAVE NO WORDS TO EXPRESS HOW GRATEFUL I AM WITH THIS INFORMATION
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
Bernd
March 14, 2013 at 7:57amThanks indeed! Made my day!
I recently installed a NAS and wanted to put the Documents folder in my personal cloud however the damn Microsoft folder was an obstacle.
TXS to your solution now I am able to keep my documents updated upon several Macs.
visionfresh
March 14, 2013 at 10:18amthanks a million
Simon
March 18, 2013 at 5:07amYou are a legend!
Marty McFly
April 11, 2013 at 2:00amI love you
Stan
April 11, 2013 at 2:15amGotta add my THANK YOU to the long list. By the way, my version of Lion does not display the Library folder in the Finder. I did it on the command line. Open up the Terminal app in your home directory and enter:
mv Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/ Library/Preferences/Jenny
April 14, 2013 at 4:23pmThank you Stan. I’m running X.8.2 and moving the folder to Library/ Preferences didn’t work, it just came back every time I opened MS Office. Your terminal command seems to have done the trick. Nice tidy Documents folder!
toby
April 22, 2013 at 4:56amcan you still search in outlook once you’ve moved it?
Kim
April 25, 2013 at 9:00pmBeing that others had problems with MS files reappearing and I had other files in the Document folder (Adobe) that I didn’t know if I could move….I just made a new folder: “Document-mine” (you can title it anyway you want)….I put it in the side bar and removed the Document folder from the side bar. Now I don’t have to deal with a messy Document folder.
Garrett
May 18, 2013 at 4:24pmDoesn’t work, Padre. For us Outlook users, that “useless” folder just, y’know, has all our email in it.
I need to move mine to another physical drive.