Why can I not see LocalLow and Local when I type in %AppData% into the Windows 7 Start Button Search, and how can I fix this issue?

Question

I typed %AppData% into the search box in Windows 7 that I get when when I click the Start Button. For some reason, all I see is the Roaming folder, ever thought I have confirmed that LocalLow and Local folders do exist. Why are LocalLow and Local folders missing from the search box, and how can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

Local and LocalLow are not actually in %AppData%. As Hand-E-Food said, %AppData% = %UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming.

Use %userprofile%\appdata\locallow and either %userprofile%\appdata\local or %localappdata%.

There is no variable (eg %LocalAppDataLow%) by default that points to the low-privilege local profile, but you could easily create one for yourself (you can also create a localappdata variable in XP; for that matter, you can create all sorts of envvar shortcuts to different parts of your file-system).

Answer 2

Because %AppData% points to:

C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Roaming

not

C:\Users\%Username%\AppData

From the command line, type Set (variablename) to see what a variable is declared as, or just Set to see all variable declarations.