Tips and Tricks: Access document libraries from your local Taskbar
Bob Fox is moving his blog to another location, so I was flipping through the archive section on his old site when I ran across a screencast called SP Administrators Desktop Shortcuts. Really simple, easy stuff: add an application to your environment variable path, create your own toolbar to point to applications on your harddrive… Stop right there!
If you can point to applications on your harddrive and can place a directory in its own toolbar, why not point to a SharePoint site and view the contents of a document library from a toolbar on your Taskbar, locally? It took me about thirty seconds to verify it could be done. Try this one out for yourself:
- Create a New Network Place
- Choose a site or subsite you want to access regularly
- Copy the URL to your clipboard
- Move to your local desktop
- Double click My Network Places
- Choose: Add a Network Place -> Next -> Choose another network location -> Next
- Past the URL from your clipboard -> Next
- Login, if necessary
- Enter a descriptive name -> Next -> Finish
- Create the new toolbar
- Right mouse click in the taskbar area at the bottom of Windows
- Choose: Toolbars -> New Toolbar…
- Expand My Network Places
- Choose the site and library desired -> Finish
The contents of the library are now accessible from a flyout list on your Taskbar. WAY too easy! This has to be one of the coolest things I have seen all week. Thanks for the brain tweak, Bob. I’m going to add that to my “101 Things You Should Absolutely, Positively Do With SharePoint 2007″.
Mark,
Since web folders have been removed from Vista, these steps won’t work. However, with just a few changes, you can do the same exact thing in Vista.
Create a new internet shortcut:
- Choose the site you want to access
- Copy the URL to your clipboard
- Click on the windows icon and choose your profile name (Quick, Chris for me)
- Right click and create a new folder (i.e. Sites)
- Open the new folder
- Right click and create a new shortcut
- Paste the URL and click next
- Give it a name and click finish
Now, to add the new toolbar
- Right click on the taskbar
- Navigate to Toolbars > New Toolbar
- Click on Desktop in the left pane
- Open your profile folder (Quick, Chris for me)
- Locate the sites folder we created earlier
- Click Select Folder
Now, you can do the same thing in Vista!
I use Windows XP, and the Create New Network Place did not work properly. I was trying to link to My Site, but it always truncated the default.aspx then dumped me into the folder instead.
Link example:
http://xxxxxx/personal/paymentr/default.aspx
Truncates to:
http://xxxxxx/personal/paymentr/