Copy UNC network path (not drive letter) for paths on mapped drives from Windows Explorer

Question

I frequently want to share network paths to files with other folks on my team via email or chat. We have a lot of mapped drives here, both ones we set up ourselves and ones set up by our IT overlords. What I'd like to be able to do is to copy the full real path (not the drive letter) from Windows Explorer to send to folks.

Example: I have a file in my "Q:" drive, \\cartman\users\emueller, and I want to send a link to the file foo.doc therein to coworkers. When I copy the file path (shift+right click, "copy as path") it gets the file name "Q:\foo.doc". This is unhelpful to others, who would need to see \\cartman\users\emueller\foo.doc to be able to consume the link.

In Explorer it clearly knows it - in the address bar I see "Computer -> emueller (\\cartman\users) (Q:) ->". Is there a way to say "hey man copy that path as text with the \\cartman\users\emueller not the Q: in it?"

I know I could just set up mapped network locations instead of the mapped drives for the ones that I set up personally and avoid this problem, but most of the mapped drives like the "users" share come from our IT policy. I could just make a separate network location and then ignore my Q: drive but that's inconvenient (and they do it so they can move accounts across servers). Sure my emailed path might eventually break because I'm losing the drive letter indirection but that's OK with me.

Answer 1

Someone named Shawn Keene provided a solution to this in the Windows 7 Forum on the Microsoft website. It is in a feature called Network Place.

1. Open Windows Explorer.

2. Right-click on the Computer entry in the left pane and select “Add a network location”. Click next.

3. Select the “Choose a custom network location” option (it was the only one presented to me) and click Next.

4. Type in the UNC path desired and click Next twice. This adds an entry that shows up in left pane of Windows Explorer below the mapped drives, but it works just like a mapped drive and shows up that way in the Save dialog of applications.

5. In Windows Explorer, navigate through that entry to the desired sub-directory and click in the blank area to the right of the bread crumbs path display in the top of the Windows Explorer screen and the UNC path appears and is highlighted.

Answer 2

In corporate networks most IT Departments create shares using DFS Name Spaces, within DFS Shares you can right click on a folder and find its target.

The other method would be to see if the Share is published into Active Directory. The easiest way for other users to find shares without knowing the UNC path or File Server name / path.

If your sharing documents with large number of users, something like Microsoft SharePoint may be a better solution as offers a web interface (with WebDAV for UNC style access) and offers built in tools to alert other users to documents.

Hope This Helps.

Answer 3

Maybe a long way around but open a cmd window. Then do "net use > filename"

Then open the filename and you can get the path:
Ex:

C:\Users\me\net use > drives.txt

opening "drives.txt"

New connections will be remembered.

Status Local Remote Network

---

         H:        \\server\c\proj\net 
                                            Microsoft Windows Network

Can copy \server\c\prog\net from the file for your use.

Hope this helps.