Copy UNC network path (not drive letter) for paths on mapped drives from Windows Explorer
- by Ernest Mueller
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.
