Sharepoint Web Folder view vs Explorer view

[Cecilia]

The dreaded Sharepoint again. I know this is a bit of an obscure thing, so any brainstorming sorts of ideas are welcome.

So Sharepoint has a Web Folder view and an Explorer view, where you can see the contents of a document library in Windows Explorer (as opposed to Internet Explorer, which is what the web folder view does).

If I go to the library in Web Folder view, I can use Actions to view it in Explorer view. Nice! But...that's too simple, of course lol

What I'd like to do is click a button in Word and go to the document library (actually, it's a template library, so they have to open as templates), but do it in Explorer view.

Currently, if I try to go directly to the folder using shell with the same address as what's seen in the explorer view, Sharepoint does something to put it back into Web folder view. If I try to use the UNC path to the web folder, I get "folder not found".

Any ideas?

[StuartR]

I just tried this using Word 2010 on Vista.

I have a shortcut that opens a SharePoint in explorer, it points to
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "\\hostname.domain.com\team\teamname\"

I copied the \\hostname...\ part of this shortcut.
I started Word
I selected Open on the File tab of the Ribbon
I pasted the shortcut into the text box at the bottom and pressed Enter
Word successfully browsed to the folder and allowed me to open a document.

What version of Word are you using?
Are you using File > Open or some other approach (Like New...)?
Are you absolutely sure your shortcut works in explorer?

[Cecilia]

I just tried this using Word 2010 on Vista.

I have a shortcut that opens a SharePoint in explorer, it points to
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe "\\hostname.domain.com\team\teamname\"

I copied the \\hostname...\ part of this shortcut.
I started Word
I selected Open on the File tab of the Ribbon
I pasted the shortcut into the text box at the bottom and pressed Enter
Word successfully browsed to the folder and allowed me to open a document.

What version of Word are you using?
Are you using File > Open or some other approach (Like New...)?
Are you absolutely sure your shortcut works in explorer?

I'm wondering if it's a version thing. I'm in Word 2003, Sharepoint 2007, WinXP. If I could get a link to work like that, then certainly a shell command would work. I started out trying to Call Shell("explorer.exe \\hostname.domain.com\team\teamname\") but then discovered that even just pasting the UNC path into Windows Explorer caused a file not found. On the other hand, Call Shell("iexplore.exe http://hostname.domain.com/team/teamname/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;") works fine, although no matter what I do I end up back in Web Folder view. :/

Unless there is some part of the hostname that I'm missing? hmmmm.

[Cecilia]

Followup: apparently there has to be a shortcut in My Network Places. Although not absolutely necessary, once you make the link:

I've discovered that I can place my My Network Place shortcut in a network folder and then Call Shell("explorer.exe Library") (where Library is the name of the shortcut, and for some reason came without .lnk so I left it that way) and it'll open the folder with Explorer view. Others don't have to have it pre-mapped in My network places, but it'll create the map automagically after it's accessed.

Maybe not elegant, but it works :)