Windows 10: Default Downloads and Pictures folders are getting mixed up, renamed, combined

Hi all,


I recently made the switch from Mac to Windows, and so far so good—I got a Dell Inspiron 5680 and am loving it. I bought the computer with a small SSD and a large HDD, and to free up space on the SSD I want to move the default Libraries folders to the HDD.


I started that process using the instructions here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3025345/move-your-windows-10-libraries-to-a-separate-drive-or-partition.html. I started with Documents and then continued on to do Videos, Pictures, and Downloads.


Somehow in this process, I must have made a mistake. The Pictures and Downloads folders hadn't successfully moved form the SSD to the HDD (as far as I can tell) and their names were both "Pictures".


When I viewed each folder's properties, they claimed to have the same filepath (on the SSD). On the "Pictures" folder with the download arrow icon, the properties window showed that the name of the folder was "Downloads," although clearly it says Pictures.


And it gets weirder: when I was trying to fiddle with it and return it to normal, both folders at one point said "Downloads." And when, on the HDD where I was trying to move all of these folders, I created a new folder and called it "Pictures", it would give me an error message saying that there was already a folder with the name "Downloads". It's like it was treating both words as the same.


Here's what I've tried so far:

- restarting the computer

- restoring default libraries

- resetting both the "Pictures" and "Downloads" folders to their default locations (under properties)


I've attached a screenshot of the folders both named "Pictures".


Thank you in advance for the help!




:)

 

Documents folder renamed to Downloads

Last night I was copying Pictures and Documents to external drives as backups.

Now I see two Downloads folders and no documents folder. One downloads folder has the download icon, the other downloads folder has the documents icon, and all the documents. The change does not seem to affect Office and Quicken, they find their files without
a problem. Tried to rename it back to Documents, but it won't rename.

Suggestions?

 

Quick Access not searching Pictures folder


Summary, that last suggestion didn't work.

• I moved the pictures to another folder temporarily.

• Then I tried to remove the Pictures folder with option one at Add or Remove Folders from This PC in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials. Even after rebooting, the Pictures folder remained.
• So I tried using option two. Same thing: reboot >> Pictures folder still there.

• Since there were no troubleshooting steps for this scenario, just for the heck of it, I ran through the restore steps. Copied some pictures into the Pictures folder, ran a Quick Access search and initial problem remains: Searching all of QA doesn't find any files in Pictures folder, running search on just the Pictures folder does. I want to run a global search and find matching files in any/all of the Documents, Music, Videos, and Pictures folders.

That article dates from 2015 and I'm guessing is out of date. I hope it didn't create potential future problems in my registry.

Bottom line: I'm still looking for a fix.

 

How to rename a default folder

Hi Zorawar,



Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

Usually, we can rename it have you changed the location of the folder in the first place? If yes, I suggest you to get back to the default location and try to rename it.

Regards.