I’ve always been a big fan of Microsoft Windows Live Skydrive. Not only does Microsoft have the best Privacy Policy and Terms of Service vs. Google, Facebook, etc. for their free online offerings, but they also give you a monstrous 25GB of free hosted storage in the cloud no strings attached.
So you can imagine how excited I was over the weekend when I discovered a groovy way to Map a drive to my Windows Live Skydrive account using Office 2010. Once mapped, the drive works just like any other Mapped network drive. I can save Office documents to it, pictures, files, etc. just like a normal mapped drive. VERY groovy! Here, let me show you how to do it!
How To Map a Network Drive to a Windows Live Skydrive
1. Open up a Microsoft Office 2010 application; I did it using Word.
If you don’t have Microsoft Office 2010, you can download the trial here or get the beta here.
2. In Word (or whatever Microsoft Office app you opened) Click the File tab and then Select
Save & Send > Save to Web > Sign In.
3. Type in your Windows Live credentials and Click OK. If you don’t have a Windows Live account, then go here and create one.
4. Choose or Create a new folder and then Click Save As. If you want your documents to be private, make sure you don’t use the Public folder.
5. It may take a moment for the Save window to appear so don’t panic if it looks like Office freezes. Once the Save box opens, Copy the URL location in the address bar.
6. Open up the Start Menu, Right-Click My Computer, and Select Map network drive
7. Paste the previously copied URL into the Folder text box. Also, Check the Connect using different credentials box. Click Finish to continue.
8. You’ll be prompted again to enter your Windows Live credentials. Type them in and then Click OK.
Hopefully, it worked, and you have your online Skydrive account mapped as a network drive on your PC. From here you can directly drag and drop files into Skydrive just like it were a regular folder on your computer.
The only catch here is that you’ll have to manually Click sign-in to access Skydrive every time you restart your computer. If you want to sign into Skydive automatically, then just follow the How-To article I write about 5 minutes ago. I explain in DETAIL How-To link your Windows 7 Account with Windows Live.
Update: MrGroove says he didn’t need to use the Online Provide plugin linked above to get this to work. He’s using Windows 7 and Office 2010 RTM. So, mileage may vary. Would love to hear your feedback on what you experience on this!
Drop any comments below or questions in our support forum! Thanks!
21 Comments
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Robert
Hello,
I would like to have SkyDrive in “My Computer” but im not using Windows Office 2010 but OpenOffice.
Is there any other way to get this done, not using Windows Office?
Greetings
Robert
grooveDexter
There sure is, keep an eye out for the how-to article either later tonight or tomorrow!
It essentially uses live.com to do it but it can be a little tricky so I’ll include screenshots.
TaraKK
Worked for me 1st attempt. I’m using Office 2010 RTM (MSDN) and Windows 7. I reboot and I still had the mapped drive.
Awesome tip. Only problem I’m having is the upload speed is a little slow. The download speed is good tho. Not sure if it’s just my cable modem or Skydrive?
Anyone else notice slow speeds uploading?
MrGroove
@TaraKK – Performance is a good point. GrooveDexter didn’t mention this in his article but from my findings things have been a little unpredictable in regards to upload and download speed from a SkyDrive Mapped Network Drive.
Upload Speed
I’ve tested a few 10 meg files and I’ve found that the upload speed (it was a .exe) can be anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes. The only thing different between the files was the filename…
Download Speed
Downloading files out of my Skydrive mapped drive has consistently been very good. For me, a 10 meg file never took more than 20 seconds which is pretty good considering the file is sitting in a cloud somewhere. I think those speeds are comparable to a good FTP site.
One thing I did notice that helped both Upload and Download speeds a bit was if I was activly navigating around in the folder tree of the skydrive from Windows Explorer, when I actually started the file copy up or down things appeared to go faster.
Hope this helps answer your question (and anyone else out there).
Anyone else out there have any data on Upload/Download speeds with Skydrive mapped to a drive in Windows?
grooveDexter
if you don’t have MS Office, check out our latest how-to for a step-by-step of mapping Skydrive to your computer without it:
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/windows-7-map-drive-skydrive-using-url-address-network/
chen
this is the best and first real solution to mapping skydrive issue. thanks.
however, i’ve noticed that after working with the folder (copying and moving files, creating new sub-folder etc.) i had to refresh the folder in order for my action to show.
i’m using office 2010 beta and win 7 64 bit.
did anyone else have this problem?
Ubuntu?
Any clue on how to connect to the skydrive folder in linux?
sionide
http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/matthew-casperson/blog/archive/2010/09/01/syncing-files-to-skydrive-in-linux.aspx
powermax
but its not displays skydrive root folder. i use it for picture.so anyway to link the entire skydrive
Daniel
When I do this, it gives me the same status as my hard drive. For example, I have 708GB free in a 805GB hard drive, and when I click on properties for the skydrive, it gives me the same stats.
bluecat40blue
This worked well for me, expecially as I’m not very technical. Is there a way of being able to see the doc. you have in your skydrive off-line. I’m guessing not but you never know, would be useful as not always on-line with the laptop.
Cognus
‘Dex I deeply appreciate this. I agree that MS have done us a huge service by throwing this challenge to Goog et al. I will be trying to set this up for a real world, bigtime, “must work” law office application.
fx_dx
worked well for in first try, thx
Chris S
Have an issue with doing this. When I try to log in with my Live ID, it tells me another user’s credentials are in use. I’m using a domain-joined machine from my corporate laptop. Anyway around this?
FiB3R
I’m having the same problem. Did you ever resolve it?
FiB3R
Close any Office apps you have running. This resolved it for me 🙂
David Johns
How can I do this on a mac?
dennyyelllow
Superb! Works really great 🙂
Cooldude
Good job! This works awesome, even for a beginner! Don’t try if you only have Office 2013, though.
Update: Only works with Word 2010
Xmodulo
What are the options if you don’t have the luxury of Office 2010?
N3rvio
GREAT!!
In OneDrive the amazing number is also in the URL of Files menu as cid parameter.