I’ve previously stated what I think about Sharepoint, but that has no bearing on the fact that I have to use it almost daily. A particular pain for Mac users is that the file browser – Open in Explorer – is not available at all so large folders of files must be downloaded on a single file basis. This is particularly painful when you have a project with a complex tiered folder structure… I think you get the point. This morning I decided to try something and am amazed it works so I’m sharing here to perhaps enable others to take advantage of this likely little known method.
Once you’ve browsed to a project and are about you open a folder link, instead copy the path to your clipboard. In my case the project has a number of folders and I wanted to use the top most available level to potentially freely browse the entire project site area. The folder link I initially copied looked like this – https://mysharepointaddress.com/files1/PWIKC06016181/Folder_Name
I switched to the Finder and chose Command+K (Go Menu – Connect to Server) and pasted in the path from my clipboard. I actually deleted the Folder_Name portion of the path and hit return. After a few seconds of thinking, the system prompted me to accept my security certificate which I accepted followed by a login prompt. I entered my domain, username and password and was happily surprised to see a Finder window open full of the folders I had just been reviewing in my browser.
This is amazingly helpful for me and hopefully for others as well. One caveat seems to be that this only seems to work on file browsing from within a project – you can’t browse the whole Sharepoint directory openly. I guess that would be asking for access to areas potentially beyond your level of security, though I even tried it from the “My Work” level and was rejected. For now it’s a project only view – but still an excellent help for Macs. I’ve dragged a link to the folder down to my dock for quick access as well…
While I still don’t really like Sharepoint, this certainly makes daily work a fair bit easier.
