With the latest Windows 10 Nov release, Work Folders can be surfaced as a location where user can easily access the document under it.

This new feature is announced on this page: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-10/work-folders-in-windows-10. In this blog post, I’d like to share some more details on the user experience, and how you can enable this on Windows 7 machines.

Background

Office team offered a way for storage provider to register the service with Microsoft Office, so that the location will automatically appear in Open and Save As user interface in Office 2013 applications. You can find the details here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35474. The same extension is offered in Microsoft Office 2016, with a slight change in the provider registration GUID format, which I’ll explain in this blog post.

Work Folders in Windows 10 builds in the support for this, and allow users to easily add Work Folders to the locations, you can also enable this capability on Windows 7 clients with some prep work.

Add a place

On Windows 10 devices with Nov update, Work Folders by default registered with Office applications. You can open any office applications, and navigate to Add a Place in Open/Save As, and you will be able to see the following:

Click on the Work Folders item, it adds the Work Folders as one of the location links associated with the user account, and you only need to do this once on one of your clients.

Open/Save As

Once the location is added, when you open or save as any office applications, Work Folders will be shown like the following:

Click on the Work Folders item will directly goes to the Work Folders path on the client, makes the access much easier.

Known issues

Because of the location list is associated with the user account, and if you are using mixed office versions, you may see both Work Folders (Office 2013) and Work Folders (Office 2016). You can find more details on the known issues here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/32881.troubleshooting-using-work-folders-as-a-place-in-microsoft-office.aspx

Windows 7

Work Folders for Windows 7 released a while back, and it doesn’t do registration with the Office applications. You can enable this by adding the following registry keys, and make sure to provide the correct path for the LocalFolderRoot:

(Notice below the regkey path for Office 2013 is the GUID without {}, and the regkey for Office 2016 is the GUID with {})

Registry key for Office 2013 plugin:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage\F02A2795-066C-47BA-936F-1517BA462169]

"LocalFolderRoot"=<Work Folders path on the client>

"DisplayName"="Work Folders (Office 2013)"

"Description"="Use Work Folders to make your work files available on all devices you use, even when offline."

"LearnMoreURL"="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=623357"

"ManageURL"="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=623357"

 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage\F02A2795-066C-47BA-936F-1517BA462169\Thumbnails]

"Url16x16"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826548.jpeg"

"Url20x20"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826549.jpeg"

"Url24x24"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826550.jpeg"

"Url32x32"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826551.jpeg"

"Url40x40"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826552.jpeg"

"Url48x48"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826553.jpeg"

Registry key for Office 2016 plugin:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage\{F02A2795-066C-47BA-936F-1517BA462169}]

"LocalFolderRoot""=<Work Folders path on the client>

"DisplayName"="Work Folders (Office 2016)"

"Description"="Use Work Folders to make your work files available on all devices you use, even when offline."

"LearnMoreURL"="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=623357"

"ManageURL"="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=623357"

 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Common\Cloud Storage\{F02A2795-066C-47BA-936F-1517BA462169}\Thumbnails]

"Url16x16"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826548.jpeg"

"Url20x20"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826549.jpeg"

"Url24x24"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826550.jpeg"

"Url32x32"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826551.jpeg"

"Url40x40"="http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826552.jpeg"

"Url48x48"=”http://i-technet.sec.s-msft.com/dynimg/IC826553.jpeg”

Once the registry keys are added, Work Folders will be surfaced as a place can be added, and you can go through the actions described in “Add a Place” to add Work Folders in any Office applications.