What does it do?

How does it work?

The SharePoint Desktop Explorer is installed on a client machine. There is no server installation required. After setting up a server connection from Windows Explorer, you can navigate to the SharePoint server connection just as you would navigate folders in Windows Explorer. Navigate to a document or image library and right-click a SharePoint document to check out, check in, upload and open the document in its associated application. You can also open a SharePoint document from its client-side application by browsing for the document in the File Open dialog of the application, right-clicking to check it out and then clicking Open to edit.

Why did we build it?

SharePoint has good integration with Office 2003/2007, where users can open, edit, and save files directly from Microsoft applications into SharePoint. However, if your users are not using Office 2003/2007, using SharePoint is not as easy. In addition, the majority of businesses today use Windows Explorer to manage their documents but cannot directly access or upload files from their network system into SharePoint from Windows Explorer. The SharePoint Desktop Explorer allows you to check files in and out directly from Windows Explorer or any client-side application that uses standard Windows Open and Save As dialogs. Users can keep their document checked out and upload changes to SharePoint, allowing the latest changes to be available to SharePoint users, as well as upload new documents, all from Windows Explorer or the client-side application itself. SharePoint documents can be moved, copied, deleted, and managed entirely from Windows Explorer. Users can also set up as many connections to SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services as needed.