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SharePoint and Network Places

by: Michael Mullin, Consultant, CRCP, MCTS, MCAD

This month’s article discusses how to use your computers ‘My Network Places’ to access files you have stored in SharePoint.

You probably have an icon on your desktop titled ‘My Network Places’. Many people view this as a mystery of Windows or as a high tech feature which is best left to administrators.  Many users will click on this icon to get a selection of network shares on which they can access or save files. However, My Network Places provides much more than just another way to access a networks file server. You can also access files in SharePoint.

First, I must make a warning. This article might not apply to your computer. While My Network Places is a standard Windows feature, its functionality and behavior can be affected by the security policies of your network. One common policy is to automatically create shortcuts in My Network Places whenever a computer joins the network. So you may have connections that you did not create. It is even possible for the network administrator to eliminate My Network Places from your desktop.  So if I describe something which does not appear on your computer, it could be for a reason. Ask your network administrator.

The first step in creating a shortcut to a SharePoint library is to go to the library itself. There we can copy its address to the clipboard. If you like to type and have a good memory for SharePoint addresses this is not a required step. In the screen shot below, we can see the OnionCentral library of the Blue Onion site. Note the address bar in the screen shot.

Although the address displayed is http://w2k3base/sites/blueonion/OnionCentral/Forms/ AllItems.aspx, this is not the address we want. The name of the library is OnionCentral. ‘Forms’ is a subdirectory of that library created by SharePoint when the library was first created. The ‘Allitems.aspx’ is a webpage used to display the contents of the library. We only want to copy the address of the library itself, which in this case is http://w2k3base/sites/blueonion/OnionCentral.

Now with our address safely tucked away on our clipboard, we can close SharePoint and return to our desktop. Double-click on My Network Places and a window similar to the screen shot below will appear.

Notice the icon titled ‘Add Network Place’. Double-clicking on this icon will start a Windows wizard which will step you through the process of creating a new network place. Click on next to move through the first two screens and on the third screen you will be prompted to enter a “Internet or Network address”. This is where we paste the address of our SharePoint library.

Click ‘Next’ and we are prompted for a name for the network place. This is the name which will be displayed next to the network folder icon in My Network Places. It can be anything, so give it a good descriptive name. For my example, I entered “Onion Central Library. Click ‘Next’ and then ‘Finish’.

Our My Network Places window now contains a new icon. As shown below.

Double clicking on the new icon will open a window displaying the contents of our library.

This window, like the My Network Places window, is an instance of Windows Explorer. You can switch between list, icon and details view; display the folders tree; open files and drag and drop files into it or out of it.

Some people do not like working with Windows Explorer, but for those that do, this provides another way to access SharePoint.

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