Make Documents Fully Disclose Where They’re Stored in the Computer

 I’ve always been bothered that a Microsoft Office document only displays the name of the open file, not the full path where it’s stored—the drive, the folder (directory) and any subfolders. That’s important information, and I think it should be better displayed. Is there a way to overcome that shortcoming?

 

 Although there is no official way to do that, I’ll show you an unpublished way to trick XP into displaying that information, and it works in all Office XP applications.

If you’re running XP, you can convert this…

…into this full path statement of the open file:

Office 2007 also lacks that information in its default view, but in this case you don’t have to use a trick to provide it. The typical display in an Office 2007 application looks like this:

But if you want the full path, you must also settle for the display of lots more intrusive information that comes loaded in a wide ribbon running the full width of the open document (see screenshots below).

To set it up for a document in any Office 2007 application, go to the Ribbon and click on the Developer and then on Document Panel, bringing up this screen:

If you want Document Properties always on display with an open file, check Always show Document Information Panel on document open and initial save .

I’ll show you the backdoor method for adding a full path statement above the toolbar in XP’s Word; the method is the same in all Office XP applications.

Click on Tools, Customize , and highlight the Commands tab. In the Categories column, click on Web and in the Commands column hover over the Address command. Now, hold down the left mouse button and drag the icon to an empty space in or above your toolbar, wherever it fits best.

If you want, you also can include a file’s path and name in the file’s header or footer. To do that in Word, click on View , Header and Footer . You can select whether to place the data in the header or the footer by clicking on the Switch Between Header and Footer button, as shown in the screenshot below.

Once you’ve decided, click on the tiny down arrow to the right of Insert AutoText , displaying the screen below. Click on Filename and path and then on Close.

This sample header will print on each page of the document:

In Excel, the process is a little different. Click on View, Header and Footer , and the Page Setup screen will appear (see screenshot below). Select where you want the information to appear— in the header or the footer

If you select the header, click on the small arrow to the right of the header box and select the message you want to appear in the header and click on OK .