When you choose Open from the File menu within a XP application, the Open dialog box will appear. You should notice the Places Bar along the left hand side that contains icons for common folders where users store documents. The Places Bar should contain the following icons: Recent, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer and My Network Places. Clicking any of these icons takes directly to that location.

Users often create their own folders for storing documents and may want to have these folders listed in the Places Bar. You can modify the contents of the Places Bar by making a change to the Windows Registry as described below:

1. Click Start and click Run

2. Type regedit.exe and click OK.
3. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies.
4. With the key selected, click the Edit menu, point to New, and click Key.
5. Type in ComDlg32.
6. Select the key you just created. Repeat set four to create a second key.
7. Type in Placesbar.
8. Close the Registry Editor.

You can verify that the procedure above was successful by opening Notepad. Click Open from the File menu. The Places Bar should be empty. In the next installment of this article you will learn how to add your own folders to the Places Bar.

[tags]windows,microsoft,xp,diana huggins,places bar,open dialog box[/tags]