Windows: 1 In Regedit, navigate on Windows 7 or later to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\LastVisitedPidlMRU. 2 In the pane on the right, examine each numbered binary item to find the Audacity item. Delete the item that refers to Audacity. 3 Launch Audacity. Record or generate audio and add a label. 4 Open the dialogues to export Labels, export from Labels Editor, export from Plot Spectrum, and open Keyboard Preferences to export key bindings. These dialogs all open in the current directory which will not be writable to a standard user. 5 After changing the export directory in any of these dialogues, all dialogues in Step 4 will now open at that export directory. * Mac This works "somewhat" like Windows, the OS storing the save project path, which all the above dialogues use if the path is changed. In HEAD, only keyboard bindings initialize on first use of Audacity to saving in a location (Applications) which requires elevated privileges. On a new Snow Leopard installation, I saw in 2.1.2 that all the dialogues in the steps above open to the user's Documents folder. But if you then open the Save or Export dialogues (which open in the Audacity installation folder), don't save anything then reopen one of the dialogues in the steps, those dialogues too now open in the Audacity installation folder. On a new Lion installation, I saw in HEAD that all the dialogues in the steps above except keyboard bindings open to Documents. Keyboard bindings opens to Applications. As soon as you have opened and closed the export keyboard bindings dialogue, all the dialogues in the steps then open to Applications. Linux 1 After installing Audacity and deleting audacity.cfg, the above export directories are set to ~/ by the system. This location is of course writable, but does not match with ~/Documents where we export audio and save projects to.

GROUP: Installation * '''Although first installation of Audacity will default audio export and project save to the user's Documents folder, TXT and XML exports such as for labels files, Plot Spectrum or keyboard bindings may offer to export elsewhere.''' ** On Windows the offered location will be the Audacity installation folder - if you are not running Audacity as Administrator, you must change the export folder in order to save the file. ** On Mac, keyboard bindings will open first time in Applications if you have not already exported or saved any files. You must change the export directory to save if you are not running as administrator. If you cancel keyboard bindings export after it offers the Applications directory, all other TXT and XML exports will then default to saving in Applications. ** On Linux, TXT and XML exports default to the root of your Home directory.