Username Portion of Generic Link...

[Bigtunelover]

I am wondering if there is a way I can create a link that will open the typical location of the "pictures" folder in windows 7 that can be used regardless of which user is logged in.

For example my link would be C:\Users\myname\pictures but if I sent that link to my colleague it would obviously not work for her. I assume i can use some syntax to have the link refer to the current users path?

Les

 

[Solandri]

Windows stores this info in environmental variables (usually accessed via the command prompt)
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/usmt/usmt-recognized-environment-variables

%systemdrive% = C:
%homepath% = \Users\<currentuser>
%userprofile% will work too

So

%systemdrive%%homepath%\Pictures

should give you what you want.

 

[Bigtunelover]

Awesome! That works perfect when I pop into RUN. It takes me exactly where I want to go. When I try to create a link for it in One Note, it doesn't recognize it as a correct pathway and "OK" is grayed out to create the link. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Solandri]

It would seem OneNote doesn't have the capability to parse environmental variables like other Office apps can (using the env function). This (pay) add-on claims to add the capability.

https://www.onenotegem.com/document/create-variable-links-in-onenote

If you don't mind losing the click-to-go-to-link functionality, you can just put %systemdrive%%homepath%\Pictures in a OneNote document. If you need to go to it, just select and copy it, then paste it into the address bar of a File Explorer window. It will navigate there as if you'd clicked a link. i.e. The environmental variables work in File Explorer.

 

[Bigtunelover]

Oh ok. That makes sense. Thanks so much for your help.