Viewing a SharePoint site via Windows Explorer and Network Places

In both SharePoint 2003 and 2007, you are able to connect to a SharePoint site and browse it using Windows Explorer. This is very useful if you need to do things like:

• Take a copy of all the items in a library
• Copy all the documents in a TFS project (site) to migrate to a different TFS server (unusual requirement – but that is why I hunted for this solution)
• Do a bulk upload by “copy and pasting” or “dragging and dropping” (Note: If you have required meta data on items in a document library, for example, this method will not enforce that requirement!)

I came across a couple of issues when trying to get this working on Windows Server 2003. Here are a couple of tips that could help when troubleshooting:

1. Make sure that you have WebDAV allowed on IIS on the server hosting your WSS Site.

2. If you are trying to add the WSS Site to “My Network Places” on a Windows Server 2003, you will need to install a patch from Microsoft – Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306). You know that you will need to do this when you get an error message about the address not being recognised as a folder. Also, if you a get a “404 – Page not Found” panel when switching to Explorer view, you need to install this update.

For more information on setting this up and about the web folders download, have a look at these articles:

http://www.intermedia.net/support/kb/default.asp?id=1207

http://blogs.tamtam.nl/mart/SoftwareUpdateForWebFolders.aspx