Editing Environment Variables in Windows 7

User environment variables are strings that contain information to control the behavior of various programs. For example, PATH environment variable tells programs how to locate a file. PATH lists the directories where repeatedly used executables are to be found.

1. Click on Start Button and type env in the search box. Select “Edit environment variables for your account” option under Control Panelsection of your search results.

2. Select the user environment variable you would like to modify and click Edit.

3. You will be presented with a popup window with the name/value pair for the variable. In the example below, we are adding a new directory tothe PATH variable.

 Note: PATH segment must be separated by a semicolon (;). There also must be no white-space on either side of the semicolon.

Beware that most programs requiring the updated environment variable(s) will have to be restarted for the change to take effect.