In most Windows programs, when you choose Open or Save As from the File menu, you see a common dialog box that includes five icons in a vertical sidebar on the left side. The five choices are pretty logical, as you can see here:
Click any of those links on the left, and you see the contents of that folder in the window on the right, so you can open a file stored there or save a new file in that location.
But what if you never use the My Recent Documents folder? Why not customize the choices in the Places Bar? You can.
To change the five choices in the standard Windows XP Places Bar, use the Tweak UI Powertoy for Windows XP. Click the plus sign to the left of the Common Dialogs category in the left and select the Places Bar option. You can hide the Places Bar completely, or you can customize the five standard places.
Click Apply to see your changes and leave Tweak UI open. Click OK to save the changes and close Tweak UI. To remove your customizations, click Show default places.
In tomorrow’s tip, I’ll show you what you can do with the Places Bar in Microsoft Office programs.
Ed Bott 
I was really exited to try it, but the drop down list seems to be limited to 30 charcters (which is less than what I need!).
Did I miss something?
Which drop-down list are you referring to?
The ones in TweakUI where you chose the custom places (in the screenshot places_bar_tweakui.jpg below the radio button “custom places bar”).
That’s odd. I was able to manually enter a filespec in there that contained more than 60 characters, and I didn’t see any suggestion of a limitation.
Hi Ed,
I got it!
The first drop-down is limited to 30 characters, but the second one is not.
Thanks,
Yves