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Map SharePoint Online/On-Premises Document Libraries As Network Drives

Today, I am writing about a very useful aspect of SharePoint Online or On-Premises and the topic is Mapping SharePoint Online/On-Premises document libraries as network drives.

Let’s assume we have a requirement from the customer that they need to map network drive into SharePoint Online document library. It means whatever they need to copy to Library in SharePoint Online should appear to the network drive as well.

If you know how to map a network drive it would be good because in the same way, we can do this for SharePoint Online document library also, with some few additional steps.

For example, it shows you here how to map network drive. It’s very easy step to do in Windows system. We just need to follow a few steps given below to map network drive:

  • Open File Explorer and select this PC.

  • On this page, we need to select computer tab option from top of the page and select map network drive. See the screenshot given below.

  • Now, select the drive letter, which you would like to select and now, select the path, which you want to map.

  • Click Finish. Now, we can see the selected path is mapped here.

There is a lot more in Map drive which I am going to skip, you can see Google for more details.

So to continue with the topic,

Now, we had shown above how to map a drive in Windows system.

  • Launch Internet Explorer. This is a very important step, as this system will not  be supported or work in other Browsers. It won’t work for Microsoft Edge and also which came in Windows 10. In Windows 10, we need to search for IE by hitting Windows key and typing in “Internet Explorer”.

  • Just log into SharePoint online site with the authorized user account and password.

  • Add a document library to SharePoint Online site.

  • To add, click on site setting page gear box on the top of the page and select Add an app.

    Or

  • For the new appearance of Office 365, we can go to the site contents page and select New, which will show in the dropdown. Here, we need to select document library and assign the name.

  • Once we will select add an app, it will take us to the site content page, where we can see document library will be on top page only (we can also search from search box of the site contents).

  • Now, click on document library and assign the name. Once the name is assigned, click on create and wait for some time till it’s getting created.

  • Once done, add some document here for testing proposes.

  • Now, click on library from the top ribbon page of the library and select open with the Explorer.

  • Once you click on the above, it will prompt us by asking permission. Click allow and wait for a second, as it will open in your local machine directory.

  • Now, to Map the same library with the network, copy the URL by pressing F4 or copy manually. Go to my computer page, select the above screenshots. We just need to assign the letter and paste the path to the path box.

  • Once everything is done, select the option called Reconnect at sign up or another available option. It’s up to your requirement --  and click finish.

  • It will map SharePoint Online library to your network as drives.

Now, you can update the data from your computer without going to the site.