SQL Server Management Studio Projects Path

The projects path for SQL Server Management Studio cannot be changed easily. It tries to save your scripts and other documents in a projects directory under your “My Documents” directory. If you don’t want SQL files stored in, say,

%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\SQL Server Management Studio Express\Projects\

(if you use SQL Server Express) you have to dig deeper to change it. I have found myself often annoyed at management studio’s insistence on putting files there. I had to change 7 keynames (including, for example, DefaultOpenSolutionLocation) Registry Keys for SSMSE files at the following location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\ShellSEM

to my preferred path (I used an absolute path in this example):

C:\my-svn

for my Subversion Working directory. Then everything was cool.