What's the environment variable for the path to the desktop?

Scott Langham picture Scott Langham · Jan 4, 2010 · Viewed 211.7k times · Source

I'm writing a Windows batch file and want to copy something to the desktop. I think I can use this:

%UserProfile%\Desktop\

However, I'm thinking, that's probably only going to work on an English OS. Is there a way I can do this in a batch file that will work on any internationalized version?

UPDATE

I tried the following batch file:

REG QUERY "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" /v Desktop
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3 skip=4" %%i in (`REG QUERY "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" /v Desktop`) DO SET DESKTOPDIR=%%i
FOR /F "usebackq delims=" %%i in (`ECHO %DESKTOPDIR%`) DO SET DESKTOPDIR=%%i
ECHO %DESKTOPDIR%

And got this output:

S:\>REG QUERY "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" /v Desktop

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
    Desktop    REG_EXPAND_SZ    %USERPROFILE%\Desktop


S:\>FOR /F "usebackq tokens=3 skip=4" %i in (`REG QUERY "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folder
s" /v Desktop`) DO SET DESKTOPDIR=%i

S:\>FOR /F "usebackq delims=" %i in (`ECHO ECHO is on.`) DO SET DESKTOPDIR=%i

S:\>SET DESKTOPDIR=ECHO is on.

S:\>ECHO ECHO is on.
ECHO is on.

Answer

Kb. picture Kb. · Jan 4, 2010

To be safe, you should use the proper APIs in Powershell (or VBScript)
Using PowerShell:

[Environment]::GetFolderPath("Desktop")

Copy something using Powershell:

Copy-Item $home\*.txt ([Environment]::GetFolderPath("Desktop"))

Here is a VBScript-example to get the desktop path:

dim WSHShell, desktop, pathstring, objFSO
set objFSO=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set WSHshell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
desktop = WSHShell.SpecialFolders("Desktop")
pathstring = objFSO.GetAbsolutePathName(desktop)
WScript.Echo pathstring