Getting Open In Explorer for a Picture library

Another one of those “I never noticed that before” questions today…

One of my customers wanted to get their pictures out of a Picture library, and said that they couldn’t find the Open In Explorer option in the Ribbon Bar. My first guess is that they were having a problem with the Internet Explorer SharePoint add-ons, but no… there’s basically NOTHING in the Ribbon Bar for a Picture library!

We have Sharegate, and I know I could have exported the Picture library to a file share, and it would have been fine. But still… how could I allow the customer to do that themselves?

A little digging around found an answer in the form of a nice little hack (elegant solution to a problem).

Open a Windows File Explorer window, click in the address bar at the top of the screen, and enter the SharePoint site address in the following format:

\\domain\site\
For example: \\sharepoint.foo.com\sites\MyTestTeamsite

That opens up the site in Windows File Explorer, and you can drill down into any library that’s out there… including Picture libraries.

I passed along the information, the customer tried it, it worked, and everyone was happy.

One response to “Getting Open In Explorer for a Picture library

  1. Rhonda baker

    Tom I was in the quick link workflow class with you. You are very sharp and I appreciate your notes. Since I do not have an it brain but love working in shatepoint where do you suggest I look to help me understand the background more please?

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