2020-3-19  I just upgraded from Office 2011 for the Mac to office 2016 (via an office 365 subscription). Can I delete the old 'microsoft user data' folder in my documents folder. My understanding is that office 2016 doesn't need it. Since I didn't use Outlook, the folder is. 2014-11-17  I have to use Microsoft Office sometimes when I need to make sure a document I've created with OpenOffice or NeoOffice looks okay to send to someone living in the PC world. One thing that annoys about MS Office even when I'm not running it is that it writes the user preferences to a directory in my Documents folder (/Documents - Microsoft User Data). Jun 07, 2012 Hi, I made the unfortunate decision to install Office on my Mac, and I deleted it off. Now, there is 50 gigs of something still left on my Mac, from when I used Outlook. I can not find this folder and data, and I want to delete it immediately to free up space.

I had to restart the finder for this change to take effect.
Also, if you don't have the backup issue that the author has, you can just make the existing folder invisible without creating the alias.

I tried simply to hide the folder using the command, and got an error message because of the spaces in the folder name. So I retyped the command, pressing Tab after Microsoft, and Terminal entered the required backslash prefix to the spaces automatically. After a relaunch of the finder (via Cmd-Opt-esc), the folder is invisible. Thanks!

Be careful. If you use Entourage, your life is also kept in that User Data folder. You might want that backed up.

That's so fabulous! I just did it with my 'iChats' folder, too (gotta save 'em for work reasons). Finally! I've been wondering about that forever....

Be careful if you've moved the iChats folder and made an alias to it! Because Apple *still* has not implemented proper support for Mac OS aliases in Cocoa, iChat cannot follow an alias. If you've replaced the transcripts folder with an alias, iChat won't complain, but it also won't save any transcripts. I spent some time on this because I want to be able to put the iChat transcript folder where I want, not where Apple wants. My final solution:
-Leave the iChat transcript folder ('iChats') in your Documents folder.
-Make an alias from the transcripts folder to wherever you want the iChat transcripts folder to 'really' be (i.e. where you will access it from). Name it whatever you want.
-Now make the original transcript folder (in the Documents folder) invisible. The alias you created will still be visible and it will still open the transcripts folder.

Ummm....
I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but this is *all unnecessary.*
Just drag your Microsoft User Data folder to your Library (~/Library/) and Office will find it there just fine, and never create a new one in your Documents folder.
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cpac

didn't work for me. MS just went and created a new User Data folder to replace the one I just moved.

Hi,
It has worked for me.
I moved the Microsoft User Data folder to /User/xxx/Library/Application Data while Word was opened.
After having closed Word then re-opened it, the Microsoft User Data folder was NOT re-created in my Document folder.
So, the SetFile command is not the only solution to get rid of this folder.
Bye,
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Thomas Balthazar

My folder gets recreated in Documents when I try this. Running 10.3.2 with latest MS Office updates on a relatively clean system, no haxies. I tried moving to my Library folder, Application Support, and I created an Application Data folder. Didn't work, and that doesn't surprise me.

I recently installed Microsoft Office on 25 MACs and had an 'unexpected error loading Microsoft Framework X library' on 5 of them. Do you have a fix for this?

thanks so much man. i applied for an account on this message board just to thank you. i appreciate an explanation like urs which is easily understandable by a new Mac convert. it means a lot

Yeah its pretty annoying that Apps create folders in Documents. Appleworks, MS, Inspiration and Adobe Acrobat all do this too. My backup script I have contains a list of folders to ignore. So its pretty easy to add in new folders and such.

I have to say that this 'feature' is the one reason I have stayed with Entourage instead of mail. I move between computers and can simply copy this one folder to take all my mail with me. With Mail.app, I would have to copy my preferences separately (or so I believe).
I could get around this using aliases on all the machines I use but its not as neat as the office solution.

Great hint. I moved a bunch of folders into the Application Support folder in my Library.
One question though, why do you have the /. in the path to the SetFile program? I've never seen that. Isn't /Developer/Tools/SetFile the proper way to do it? What's the /. for?

Well dammit, this is a whole new thing. After how many years. . . Just opened Entourage '04 and it acted like that MSUserData Dolder was always in /User/Library/Preferences.
Sure is nice to have the Documents Folder back for my own use. I had such an arcane thing going, just to have my own files. Thank you! [10.4.5, AlBook]

Yep it works but the place has to be /Library/Preferences not just /Library

Microsoft User Data Folder Mac Delete

Outlook 2019 Data File Location

where do you type that developer code into?
Thanks