Sharepoint online Drive mapping on OSX 10.12

Question

Level 1

13 points

Sharepoint online Drive mapping on OSX 10.12

Hi all,

Wanting to be able to map a Sharepoint online webDAV team site in OSX Finder. Can it be done without 3rd party clients needed to do it. At some point it appears back in older versions it could be done simply by just using the 'connect to server' command in Finder. Now that seems to have broken.

Apple, given the amount of other cloud storage vendors there are, it would be great if you allowed other file protocols to be mapped in Finder easily. It is hard in the business world to go all Mac if Apple will not give the tools and make it easier to do it.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2016), macOS Sierra (10.12.5)

Posted on Jul 10, 2017 9:36 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,982 points

Jul 11, 2017 3:57 AM in response to DallasBW

There is no such thing as "drive mapping" in macOS or Unix.

You mount the share to a mount point in the file system.

You should still be able to connect to webDAV servers as you always did: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25331

Once connected, create an alias of the share and store it somewhere convenient for easy reconnection.

Reply

Answer 2

DallasBW Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 3, 2017 3:50 PM in response to Barney-15E

Yup semantics Barney-15E, mounting/mapping, not getting bogged down in the details of nomenclature. Sadly you would think that, but the answer is no if you want to test it out yourself or do a quick google search of the same issue and even go and vote at the apple communities for the feature. If can find anything to prove me wrong on that point, let me know and I will pass on the apple feature request forum where there is a few hundred votes now.

Cheers

Reply

Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,982 points

Oct 3, 2017 4:44 PM in response to DallasBW

Yup semantics Barney-15E, mounting/mapping, not getting bogged down in the details of nomenclature.

Or you can use common terms in your title as most Mac users have no idea what "drive mapping" means. Might get more response.

If you can find me a WebDAV server I can mount, I'll give it a try, but I don't have access to any.

Reply

Answer 4

DallasBW Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 3, 2017 7:01 PM in response to Barney-15E

😁 Ha ha, yes will do. Thanks Barney-15E for the tip.

Not sure if I can edit the title now to change that. Will need to think of a WebDAV server to send a link for. I think that the Apple site link you sent me and I have looked at before has a hyperlink in it to the actual WebDAV org site there. Will see what I can do

cheers

Reply

Answer 5

DallasBW Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 4, 2017 5:00 PM in response to Barney-15E

Hey Barney, thanks for your help so far, sadly this is the state of affairs at the moment. I put this up on a Windows forum too and here is the response I did come across some time back, Mapping a drive to a SharePoint library (Connect to Server) from Mac OSX Finder does not allow drag and drop of files in…

Note the mapping reference 😁

So it looks like it is a suck it up and hope type wish for a long time to come. My main motivation here was to see if any push could happen to get some sort of long term fix happening or another clever way around it somehow.

Reply

Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

121,982 points

Oct 4, 2017 6:26 PM in response to DallasBW

Note the mapping reference 😁

That's what I would expect on a Windows forum.

Windows users have no idea how any other file system works, and they all think when you tell someone the file is on the "Q-drive" that everyone has the same share mapped to the "Q:\" drive. You can certainly find Mac users that understand the term, but it makes little to no sense on any unix file system.

I didn't know SharePoint was a WebDAV server. I thought it was just another one of Microsoft's proprietary, non-compatible with the rest of the world adventures. I guess it is, with restrictions.

The issue in the article is problematic for SharePoint because it doesn't allow the metadata files to be uploaded to the server.

BlueHarvest was once used (may still be) to prevent OS X from pushing those files to network locations. But, I think it just cleans off the network drives periodically. That wouldn't work in the above situation.

You can try this, but I'm not sure if it works in Sierra or High Sierra.

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true; killall Finder

See here for more details: macos - Disable storage of invisible files "._" on my cfs or smb network storage - Ask Different

Note that the other answers in that link will not work as they are post-write "clean-up" workarounds.

Reply