With smooth integration of SkyDrive with Office 2010, you are now able to upload & save Office documents directly to SkyDrive, which offers 25GB of free storage. Previously we have reviewed 3rd party tools, such as, Live SkyDrive Upload Tool & SkyDrive Explorer. Wouldn’t it be easy if you could map Network Drive with SkyDrive and access documents, images, music, etc., right from Windows Explorer? This post is a detailed walk-through of mapping Network Drive with Live SkyDrive without requiring any 3rd party tool for this very sole purpose.

Update: We use Office 2010 only to get the WebDAV address, if you don’t want to purchase Office 2010, there is still another way to get the WebDAV address. Simple SkyDrive Viewer is a Windows application that lets anyone with a Windows Live account grab the personal WebDAV address quickly, and best of all, it is open source and free.

To begin, open Word 2010 document, Excel 2010 spreadsheet, or a PowerPoint 2010 presentation. On File menu, click Save & Send. In main window, click Save to Web. Now, click Sign In button, which can be found on the right side of the window.

Now login with Windows Live credentials.

Choose a folder which you want to map as Network Drive in Windows Explorer. As we are intending to access a secure folder, therefore, we will click My Documents.

It will bring up Save as dialog, now copy the selected folder path (SkyDrive My Document folder path) from the address bar and click Save.

In Windows Explorer, on left sidebar, right-click Network and click Map network drive.

It will bring Map Network Drive dialog, from Drive list, specify Drive letter. In Folder pane, paste the recently copied SkyDrive My Documents folder path. For reconnecting network drive on Windows account login, enable Reconnect at logon option, but sometimes it takes way longer to connect with the SkyDrive Network drive on Windows logon, eventually making the system login a bit slower. Once done, click Finish.

It will open up SkyDrive My Documents folder in Windows Explorer. Now start uploading folder & files in SkyDrive cloud directly.

Give the Network drive an appropriate name to conceal the SkyDrive login address.

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