Accessing OneDrive folders and files from Windows Explorer

The new app to have access to your OneDrive (formerly known as SkyDrive) files locally and offline is great and super easy to use but it does not replaces Live Mesh when you want to share and have access from Windows Explorer files and folders.

A neat tip I found there shows you how to map any SkyDrive folder to a local drive. It’s fairly easy, works for Win7 and 8 (RT or x86) and allows you to also map shared drive from other people (or amongst your various SkyDrive accounts if you have several of them):

1. Go to OneDrive you want to have access to. Whether it’s yours or a shared one (from the “shared” menu from example):

2. Click on the “files” link or if you want to see a shared folder the folder you want to access from Windows Explorer.

– If you click on your own “ files” you will see an URL like this in the address bar: https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=0E04743B07601234

– if you click on a shared folder you will see something relatively similar: https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=20E38AA6BE123456&id=20E38AA6BE6B7896%21110

The important part is the bold number after the #cid=

3. Open file explorer and, from, there, you will have two options:

Option A) while on “Computer”, click on “map network drive” (e.g. by right-clicking on “Computer” and selecting the menu item corresponding).

You can also use “map network address” if you don’t want to associate this to an actual drive letter. This has the advantage of avoiding sometime annoying “cannot reconnect drive” messages at boot-up.

Then enter the following address: https://d.docs.live.net/YourCIDNumber/

– YourCIDNumber will be, in the examples above 0e04743b07601234 and 20e38aa6be123456

– You must ensure that all caps (A-F) are replaced with a-f. (not always necessary but could be needed, your mileage may vary)

– You also have to ensure that the address ends by a “/” (not always necessary but could be needed, your mileage may vary)

For instance the first one should be: https://d.docs.live.net/0e04743b07601234/

“reconnect at logon” ensure it remains connected when you reboot.

When prompted for user name and password, just enter your Hotmail/Outlook.com/Windows Live id/Microsoft account number and the associated password

That’s it! And you can map as many of those as you want.

Option B) :

• Enter the following address in the address bar \\d.docs.live.net@SSL\DavWWWRoot\CIDBUMBER (no need to worry about caps/nocaps in this case).
• Enter the password as indicated above
• Then Drag and drop the icon in your address bar to save it as a Favorite or as a shortcut in any folder (Desktop, My documents….)

If you want to give this option B a quick spin just click on this link to my public folder on SkyDrive. You’ll be able to see the files and navigate, but not change or deleted them (read access only): \\d.docs.live.net@SSL\DavWWWRoot\ef1749b73b7cc8c5

Note: with Option A) using “mapping to drive letter” you can then use the free SyncToy tool to synchronize the files on this cloud folder and your PC.