If you have an installed copy of Microsoft’s Office suite, then you might have come across a hidden folder named MSOCache in your Windows installed drive. MSOCache or Microsoft Office Cache is just what its name suggests – a cached copy of Microsoft Office’s installation source. Why is it there? So that you can easily add feature, perform repair operation, or install service packs without requiring access to the original installation source.
If you are running short on space on your system drive, then you might want to move the folder to another drive or a network folder. Deleting the directory in its entirety is not recommended as that will leave behind orphaned registry entries, which may cause problems if you try to modify your Office installation in the future.
For Office 2003 Microsoft had a tool called Local Installation Source Tool to help move the MSOCache folder, but it’s not available for any other Office versions. So for newer Office suites, we have to use the symbolic link feature. Here are the steps to safely move MSOCache folder to a location of your choice:
- Move the entire MSOCache folder to the location you want.
- Start Command Prompt as an administrator.
- In Command Prompt run the following command to create a symbolic link to the new MSOCache location:
mklink /D "C:\MSOCache" "D:\New\Location\of\MSOCache"
Instead of the command prompt, you can also use a free utility called Symbolic Link Creator to create symbolic links. Symbolic Link Creator is simply a GUI software for the builtin mklink command.
And you’re done! Now if you go to your C: drive, the folder and all its content will appear just as it was before but only this time its taking no space on the drive.
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