Change the default location of the normal.mxt

[ChrisGraves]

I have a client who is unable to save their normal.mxt to the C drive (they have restricted access to C drive and are unable to make changes to the drive). This means that any interface changes, toolboxes that are added or connections in ArcCatalog are not saved and have to be reset every time the application is opened. They would like to redefine the default location for the normal.mxt.

I have found a vb macro code that does work:
Option Explicit
' in Normal.mxt ThisDocument
Private Function MxDocument_NewDocument() As Boolean
' avoid an infinite loop
If Application.Templates.Count
Application.NewDocument False, "D:\Mytemplate.mxt"
End If
End Function

However, while this would solve the issue in the immediate future we are looking to provide the client with a long term solution as part of the larger solution, with the change to ArcGIS 10, this solution will soon become redundant.

[ChrisFox]

Sorry for the late response on this one. If you are restricting write access to the C: Drive one thing you could do is leverage folder redirection to redirect the user profile application data to a location that the user does have write access to. This Microsoft article discusses this topic further:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732275.aspx

[KoryKramer]

Doing some cleanup of aged ideas. 

ArcGIS Desktop is in mature support and will be retired March 1, 2026 so we won’t be considering this idea. We recommend that you migrate to ArcGIS Pro, our fully supported desktop GIS application. See Migrate from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro for more information. Thank you for taking the time to share your ideas.  We truly appreciate your contributions to continuously improving the software to help you do your work and look forward to what ideas you have for ArcGIS Pro.