Monday, January 09, 2017

Copying mapped network drive locations to email for someone that doesn't share your mapping

For the better part of score years, I've been fumbling around to copy mapped network folder locations to emails for those people within the same organization who do not share my network mappings.  This is particularly annoying when the files are too big or too many to simply email.

It's not obvious in Windows on how to copy the raw network location, such as \\grt.peanuts.fspt.com\Shared1$\MyPlace when that same folder is mapped on the current computer as simply S:\MyPlace.  To allow another person to see my files at MyPlace, I need to somehow copy the "UNC" or raw address, so that I can paste it into my email.

I finally discovered how to do this.  It's not hard, but discoverability is nearly zero.

  1. Open Windows Explorer.
  2. Within Windows Explorer, navigate to the network folder location that you wish to share.  (This assumes you've already set up that folder to be shareable.)
  3. Start a new email from Outlook.
  4. Make sure both Windows Explorer and your email windows are open and visible on the screen.
  5. Within Windows Explorer, right-button click and hold on any file within the shared folder, or right-button click and hold on the folder icon to the far left of the address field.
  6. Folder icon of address bar
  7. While still holding down the right-mouse button, drag the selection over to the body of your open email and release the button. A new dialog appears.
  8. Copy here dialog
  9. From this dialog, select Create Hyperlink Here.
  10. Voile!  You automatically have a hyperlink to your folder location.

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