Map Local Drive Letter To Live SkyDrive Using Office 2010

By Usman on Apr 26 2010 5 Comments

With smooth integration of SkyDrive in Office 2010 you are now able to upload & save Office documents directly to SkyDrive, which offers 25GB of free storage. Previously we have reviewed 3rd party tools, such as, Live SkyDrive Upload Tool & SkyDrive Explorer. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you can map Network Drive with SkyDrive and access documents, images, music, etc right from Windows Explorer? This post covers a detailed walk-through of mapping Network Drive with Live SkyDrive without requiring any 3rd party tool for this very sole purpose.

Update: We use Office 2010 only to get the WebDAV address, if you cannot afford Office 2010, there is still another way to get the WebDAV address. Simple SkyDrive Viewer lets anyone with a Windows Live account grab the personal WebDAV address quickly without any strings attached, and best of all it is opensource and free.

To begin, open Word 2010 document, Excel 2010 spreadsheet, or PowerPoint 2010 presentation. On File menu, click Save & Send. In main window, click Save to Web. Click Sign In button, which can be found on the right side.

sign in

Now login with Windows Live credentials.

sign in 1

Choose a folder which you want to map as Network Drive in Windows Explorer. As we are intending to access a secure folder, therefore, we will click My Documents.

1 docu

It will bring up Save as dialog, now copy the selected folder path (SkyDrive My Document folder path) from address bar and click Save.

2-copy path 1

In Windows Explorer, on left side bar, right-click Network and click Map network drive.

map network drive

It will bring Map Network Drive dialog, from Drive list, specify Drive letter. In Folder pane, paste the recently copied SkyDrive My Documents folder path. For reconnecting network drive on Windows account login, enable Reconnect at logon option, but sometimes it takes way longer to connect with SkyDrive Network drive on Windows logon, eventually making  system login a bit slower. Once done, click Finish.

3--map

It will open up SkyDrive My Documents folder in Windows Explorer. Now start uploading folder & files in SkyDrive cloud directly.

copying

Give the Network drive an appropriate name to conceal the SkyDrive login address.

rename

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  • Pranav

    Hi,

    I’ve been searching for a similar solution since a long time. Thank you so much. But my question is after mapping as network drive will it display existing folders or it will not display anything. I have plenty of files uploaded to skydrive. In explorer it says 15gb full (though it’s not) but when I open, it displays nothing..

    any idea?

    • Big Dawg

      It seems that Webdav requires the mapped location be sent to a specific folder. You can’t just point it at the root and display everything on Skydrive.

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  • j

    Hey it wont work at all for me it just keeps asking for my credidentials. the problem happens when i click finish to map the network folder. Thx for ur help in advance

    • Ryan Lim

      Great work Usman B-)

      As for j question about asking for credentials, this sometimes is a problem with network drives. As you didn’t mentioned what window OS you are using, it take guessing. Go to Window Control Panel, (For window 7, Vista), select show large icons on top right corner.

      Double click the Credential Manager (it looks like a yellow stick), you will find 3 types of credentials, Windows, Certificate Based and Generic. Under Generic looks for the skydrive one (normally sorted to the top if you just tried mapping the network drive), expand it (the arrow on the right) and you should see the persistence : Enterprise

      a) If it is persistence : local then edit it to Enterprise and try using the network drive again.
      b) If it still doesn’t work, delete it. Go back to the network drive and try to enter the credential again
      c) if still doesn’t work, delete it again, and this time inside the credential Manager, try to “add a generic credential” and enter the information again. Then go to the network drive and see if works.
      d) If not, reboot the compute and try the above 3 again.

      If still can’t work, then I can’t help you as cannot see your computer and the programs/window updates/drives etc, any of these may have caused the discconection

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  • Marco

    It doesn’t work it says “Could not open” and then it tells me the link, I tried adding that link but it doesn’t work, what can I do??

    Thanks in Advance!