"Clarence Donath" <donath(a)hks.com&gt; writes: Hmm, there is a variable `save-options-file' is a variable declared in Lisp. -- loaded from "/usr/local/src/xemacs/xemacs-21.2/xemacs/lisp/menubar-items.elc" Value: ".xemacs-options" Documentation: File to save options into. This file is loaded from your .emacs file. If this is a relative filename, it is put into the same directory as your .emacs file. Another variable is `custom-file' is a variable declared in Lisp. -- loaded from "cus-edit" Value: "~/.emacs" Documentation: File used for storing customization information. If you change this from the default "~/.emacs" you need to explicitly load that file for the settings to take effect. I assume that playing around with these two might give you a chance. Something like (setq save-options-file (expand-file-name "~/my-options-file") custom-file (expand-file-name "~/my-custom-file")) -norbert, guessing.