How to navigate to a different directory in Jupyter Notebook?

I have recently installed Anaconda 5 and with it Jupyter Notebook. I am excited with its rich functionality but I can not find a way to navigate to directories which are not children. More specifically I have tried to double-click the folder icon but that resulted in the same View.

Your advice will be appreciated.

Default root of the Jupyter explorer is the current location (folder) where you start the Jupyter server. With the explorer, you can only navigate to all levels of the children folders, but not the parent's of that location. There is an option to set the root folder --notebook-dir when you start Jupyter. Here is an example that starts Jupyter server and sets the root at D:/my_works/jupyter_ipynbs

jupyter notebook --notebook-dir D:/my_works/jupyter_ipynbs

Similarly, for jupyter lab:

jupyter lab --notebook-dir D:/my_works/jupyter_ipynbs

Once Jupyter is open on the browser, its home or root directory will be what you specified as the value of --notebook-dir, in this case D:/my_works/jupyter_ipynbs. From that point, you can navigate to all its sub-directories.

I use the next code to set jupyter lab from any root folder. From the Anaconda Prompt:

jupyter lab --notebook-dir "E:/Google Drive/Sediments_Regi"

Between the " " include the desire folder.

For windows user there is another solution. You can create a symbolic link at directory that Jupyter starts working.

from command prompt: ( mklink /D [the name of the link] [target directory]

> mklink /D G_Drive G:\DsN20

In Windows: jupyter notebook "C:\ [route to any folder]" ,also works even if the folder does not contain a jupyter notebook. You can then navigate forward, but not backwards, to open or create a new notebook.

On windows, when opening from command prompt, browse to the directory you wish

For example to browse to the directory D/pythonprograms

cd D:
cd pythonprograms

and execute

jupyter lab

this will start the instance with root folder as pythonprograms

This site describes 3 ways to start jupyter notebooks in specific folder:

1. By changing your current dir to the specific folder, then starting notebook from there:

cd C:\projects\notebooks
jupyter notebook

2. By using the notebook-dir parameter while staring notebook:

jupyter notebook --notebook-dir=C:\projects\notebooks\

3. By creating and editing the configuration file (permanent solution, for all environments): open your Anaconda prompt, run this command

jupyter notebook --generate-config

It will create file .jupyter\jupyter_notebook_config.py in C:\Users<your_user_name>. In this file, find c.NotebookApp.notebook_dir parameter, uncomment it by removing the hash and set the value to the directory of your projects.

c.NotebookApp.notebook_dir = 'C:\projects\notebooks'

Now you can run Jupyter Notebook from the Anaconda prompt (or the Anaconda Navigator), and you’ll start from your preferred directory. Keep in mind that you’ve changed the directory for every environment.

I use Jupyter as plugin in my projects (pipenv install jupyter) and to make it start in current folder comment out notebook_dir option (or set to '' — from Jupyter Notebook docs Config file and command line options):

# ~/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py

## The directory to use for notebooks and kernels.
# c.NotebookApp.notebook_dir

It is equivalent to writing every time jupyter notebook --notebook-dir . (. — current folder)

If you open the jupyter notebook from the anaconda navigator, you will be able to move around in the directory structure as you please.

In Windows, if you want a permanent change, the shortcut that is installed defaults to

> C:\Anaconda3\python.exe C:\Anaconda3\cwp.py C:\Anaconda3 C:\Anaconda3\python.exe C:\Anaconda3\Scripts\jupyter-notebook-script.py "%USERPROFILE%/"

If you change "%USERPROFILE%/" to "C:\your\path", then opening the shortcut will go to the correct folder on startup.

note: I installed Anaconda to C:\Anaconda3, so yours might be a bit different based on where you installed it.