# About Your &tde; Account

&tde; stores information about your personal settings in a few different places:

- The hidden directory `.kde` (note the period at the beginning), located in your home directory, contains a large number of files that store &tde; settings. Some subdirectories you may find useful are:`.kde/share/config`, which contains configuration files for individual applications; `.kde/Autostart`, which contains links to applications which should start each time you start &tde;; and `.kde/share/apps/tdeabc`, where your address book is stored.

- The environment variables `TDEDIR` and `TDEDIRS` tell &tde; where its files are stored. You will usually only need to set `TDEDIR` to the directory in which &tde; is installed, but sometimes you might have other &tde; programs installed elsewhere: in this case, you can use the `TDEDIRS` environment variable. Set `TDEDIRS` to a list of all the directories containing &tde; programs, separated by commas. For example, if you have &tde; programs in both `/usr/local/kde` and `/home/phil/kde`, you can use `export TDEDIR=/usr/local/kde,/home/phil/kde` if you use bash or `setenv TDEDIR=/usr/local/kde,/home/phil/kde` if you use sh.

## Related Information

- The &tde; Administrator Guide contains more information about the directories that &tde; uses.