Make your SharePoint Libraries Favorites in Windows Explorer for Easier Saving

You're working furiously on a document with only a few minutes left until the doors close for the day (or your laptop battery dies, or some other emergency happens). You need to save the document to SharePoint, but you can't remember where the document library is in which you need to save the document.  If you make your frequently used Document Libraries Favorites in Windows Explorer.  That won’t be a problem again!

Here's how to make it easier to save your documents to your SharePoint library:

Create a Favorite in Windows Explorer.  Not in your browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, etc.). Let me show you what I mean:

Figure 1: Windows Explorer Favorites

So how did I get this screen? And how did I put the Shared Documents folder in my Favorites?

This blog post will answer those questions.

How to Get to the Favorites in Windows Explorer:

I’m using Windows 7, so if you’re running XP, Vista, or Win8, your screen may look a bit different.

To get to the Windows Explorer window shown above, simply click on Computer from the desktop or Start Menu.  Scroll up to see the Favorites listing.

How to Add a SharePoint Document Library to your Windows Explorer Favorites Listing:

Navigate to the library where you want to save documents.  For instance, if you are a Program Chair, you might want to make your Advisory Committee site Libraries favorites.  Here’s an example:

I need to put documents into each of the libraries on the Cosmetology and Barbering Advisory Committee Site.  When I navigate to the site, I see there are 4 different libraries where I can put documents:

Figure 2: Advisory Committee Site

Agendas

Document Library

Master Advisory Committee Member

Program of Work (not shown in picture)

I will need to create a Favorite for each of these libraries.  

To create the favorites, we’ll need to create each Favorite separately.

Let’s begin.

1. Open the Advisory Committee site and click on one of the document libraries (Agendas for example.  To open the full library, click on it’s name (the word, “Agendas”)
2. Click on the Actions tab and select Open with Windows Explorer: (see Figure 3)

Figure 3: Open with Windows Explorer

When you click on Open with Windows Explorer, it may take a few minutes for the window to pop up (Make sure you do not have a pop-up blocker preventing SharePoint from opening new windows).

When it opens it will look like this:

Figure 4: Agendas in Windows Explorer view

 4)     Next, create the Favorite, by right-clicking on the Favorites icon (the star) and selecting Add Current Location to Favorites option) see Figure 5 below

5) By default, the item will be given the name of the last item in the bread crumb (see Figure 4 above - in that example the last item is "1" and that's the name the item was given)
6) Rename the library by right-clicking on the item in the Favorites listing (in the example I changed the name of item "1" to Cosmo_advi_comm_Agendas)

Figure 5: Add current location to Favorites

Figure 6: Windows Explorer Favorites listing with SharePoint document libraries added

Repeat steps 1-6 for any additional document libraries you want in your Favorites listing.  Taking a few moments to do this now will make saving documents to your Document Libraries much easier.


Once you do this, from then on, when you need to upload a document to one of the these libraries, all you will need to do is select Save As from the File menu in Word (or other program) and then choose from the libraries you just made favorites.

Happy Favoriting everyone!

ShoutOut to Jennifer Martinez and SHARE 2013 Conference for sharing this wonderful information... Jennifer's presentation is available on Slide Share