I am using the latest version of Emacs on Windows 7.
I unzipped Emacs to: C:\Users\MyName\OneDrive\emacs
.emacs.d is in: C:\Users\MyName\AppData\Roaming
I would like to have to set up .emacs.d in C:\Users\MyName along with an init.el instead of ~.emacs. Do I transfer .emacs.d to the new location or create a new .emacs.d folder?
I assume changing the .emacs.d location will also require me to change %HOME%. If so, how do I change the home variable?
Well, based on the manual and my memory of how I set up my emacs configuration, you're correct, you'll need to set up the HOME environment variable.
You can set up the HOME variable on Windows 7 by going to the Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Advanced > Environment Variables… and checking the User Variables for < User Name > list.
If there isn't already a user variable called HOME in that list, just press “New” and put one in pointing to the directory you want. Not exactly sure if there are any other programs that use HOME as an environment variable, but so far I've not encountered any other program in Windows that uses it.
.emacs.d folder in that new home directory when you launch Emacs. You can either use a .emacs file in the new home directory for your user configurations, or you can create an init.el and place it inside your new .emacs.d folder. In terms of copying anything over from the previous installation, you can use Windows Explorer to copy / paste until you are more comfortable with using Emacs (which contains other possibilities for copy / paste).
init.el into an .emacs.d directory in the HOME directory I set up, using Windows Explorer. They're really just text files you can move about, which is great for backing up and synchronizing your emacs settings across multiple machines.
Commented
Feb 17, 2015 at 6:07
HOME variable to C:\Users\UserName and moved my existing .emacs.d directory to C:\Users\UserName (in your case, if you haven't made any customizations, just create your .emacs.d directory and init.el file). That's worked okay for me.
Commented
Feb 18, 2015 at 7:33
I really like the answer posted by @Ryan here.
;; Place this file in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming and point to the appropriate files
(setq user-init-file "C:/path/to/.emacs")
(setq user-emacs-directory "C:/path/to/.emacs.d/")
(setq default-directory "C:/whatever/you/want/to/start/in")
(setenv "HOME" "D:/my/home/directory")
(load user-init-file)
P.S. I cannot make a comment, so I posted an answer.
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.emacs. Everything is in the manual : M-x info-emacs-manual >> Emacs and Microsoft Windows/MS-DOS >> Windows HOME