Windows 10: Undo: Merged your Pictures folder with your User folder

How to: Undo: Merged your Pictures folder with your User folder

In Windows 10 you can Move Location of Pictures Folder in Windows 10. You may have done this, for example, because your C: drive is an SSD with limited free space and you want to keep your Pictures on a larger E: drive.

When you make this move the original C:\Users\<YourUsername>\Pictures folder will be deleted. If you change your mind and want to move Pictures back to the C: drive you will have to create a new Pictures folder in your User folder and select that as the destination. If you fail to take this step and just select C:\Users\<YourUsername> then Windows warns you that you are trying to merge Pictures with you Profile and that this is a permanent change that cannot be undone.




At this point you should have cancelled, created a new Pictures folder and selected that. Unfortunately it's all to easy to click Yes before you've fully reading the warning.

The consequences of merging the folders can be very confusing, so first a description of some strange effects you may see so that you can identify this as being your problem. In the screenshots that follow a user with the name Owner has merged their Pictures folder with their user profile folder, C:\Users\Owner. The most obvious anomaly is that the user folder now appears in some parts of File Explorer under the name Pictures and with a 'pictures' icon, but a Command Prompt will still show its true name.




Your User folder will also contain a Pictures folder which, if you click on it, will take you to your same User folder, but with some subtle differences in what you can see there. You won't see a Pictures folder any more, but you will now see Camera Roll and Saved Pictures.




Windows is correct in saying that you cannot undo the redirection with the normal tools Windows provides. But it is possible to manually separate the Pictures and Profile functions of the merged folder. To repair the damage done, follow these steps. It's important to perform all the steps in this order, so do not try any shortcuts.



Here's How:

1. Open File Explorer, in the View ribbon tick 'File name extensions' and 'Hidden files'. On the View ribbon, click Options > change folder and search options. In the window that opens click the View tab. Scroll down and untick 'Hide folder merge conflicts' and 'Hide protected operating system files'. Click Apply or OK to save these changes.




2. In the left hand column of file Explorer (otherwise known as the Navigation Pane) click on your User folder (the one with a user icon to its left). In these examples the user has the name Owner.

3. In your user folder, create a new folder named Pictures. You will now see two Pictures folders, the original one with a pictures icon, the new one as a plain folder.




4. find the desktop.ini file in C:\Users\<yourname> and move it into the new C:\Users\<yourname>\Pictures you just created.

5. Using File Explore to cut and paste, move your live folders 'Camera Roll', 'Saved Pictures', and 'Screenshots' if it exists (will only be there if you've used WinKey+PrtScn) and any photos to the new C:\Users\<yourname>\Pictures you created.

6. Open Registry Editor (regedit) and go to the key...
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

*note Before making any registry changes, always back up the registry key in case you make an error and need to restore it. Select the key (in this case User Shell Folders) in the left hand list, then use File > Export... to save the key as a .reg file. You can restore the key by double-clicking on the .reg file you created.





7. You can now edit both {0DDD015D-B06C-45D5-8C4C-F59713854639} and My Pictures to point to %USERPROFILE%\Pictures

Double-click on the item in the right hand list to open the edit dialog box, type the changes and click OK to save them. Sign out and then back in, or restart the PC for these registry changes to take effect.




That's it. You now have a functional pictures folder with all its standard sub-folders located in the C:\Users\<yourname>\Pictures folder. If you wish, you can now move it elsewhere. Or you can just leave it where it is.




Note Initially your new Pictures folder may just have a plain folder icon. After making the changes it took about 10 minutes of using the PC before the normal pictures folder icon returned. If it doesn't return, try a Restart or two. If it still doesn't come back try rebuilding the Icon Cache.

my thanks go to @Barman58 for bringing desktop.ini to my attention, moving that was key to getting this to work.

:)

 

Problem with user profile file structure

@Try3, one of the key steps in disentangling merged folders (in the case I looked at it was Pictures and the User profile folder) is to move the desktop.ini files.See this tutorial for more details...


Undo: Merged your Pictures folder with your User folder

 

Picture User Folder vs Library Picture Folder / Add to User folder

Hi,



Form the issue description, I realize that you are trying to view your pictures in the default pictures library. To do so, you have to change the location of the folder that contains your pictures to the default pictures library folder.



To view your pictures in the default pictures library, I suggest you to follow the steps below.

• 
  Right-click on the default Picture folder
  and click on Properties.
  
• 
  Navigate to Location tab.
  
• 
  Click on Move…. and select the folder that contains your pictures and click on
  Apply and then click on Ok.
  

Hope the information helps. Kindly write back to us for further information on Windows. We will be happy to assist you.



Thank you.

 

Accidentally merged user pictures folder with (G drive.

Thank you for your reply. The problem is when I relocated the user Pictures folder to G drive I never created a folder for it inside G drive, so it's now the entire G drive and the pictures folder and videos folder got merged with the drive itself. Check the last screenshot from my IMGUR link and compare that to step 3 from the option one tutorial you linked. When I try to click revert to default location I'm afraid it will move my entire G drive and its contents to the C:/User/example/Pictures.

- - - Updated - - -

I've moved shared Pictures folder to another drive but didn't name it Solved - Windows 10 Forums
I found someone with the same problem as mine and you told them to do the same thing and it worked for them. I should trust your expertise and try it then.

 

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.

 

I've accidentally replaced my User folder with my Pictures folder

3. In the Reece folder, create a new folder named Pictures. You will now see two Pictures folders, the original one with a pictures icon, the new one as a plain folder.

When I try to follow this step I get asked if I want to merge the folder





Do I select Yes?