Desktop Shortcut to Sharepoint Files

Adam1V 

I had this same issue/ challenge and believe I have a solution.

[First let me say] I was having variations of the issue where I couldn't get a desktop shortcut to the ACTUAL file on SharePoint. Best I could do was to get a shortcut to a file which would only download a copy of it. That is, until I figured out this workaround:

1. Go to the SharePoint folder which contains the file you want to create a desktop shortcut to.
2. Select the file/ click the [3 vertical dots] dropdown menu to the right of the file and select 'Copy Link'. 
3. Copy the link, with permissions set to 'people with existing access can use the link'.

Now, if you went to your desktop and did the right click/ create shortcut option, and then pasted this URL into which you just copied, it would not work for you... well, it would not work for me anyway. So here's the trick:

1. Right-click the command bar at the top of the chrome browser (the space directly below where the web address is displayed). Select 'Add page'.
2. An 'Edit Bookmark' window will appear. Give whatever name you want to the bookmark, and then notice directly below where you type the name is an area for the URL... This is where you will paste what you copied from step #3 above. Click Save.
3. Click on the new bookmark which has now appeared in your bookmarks bar. It should open the file directly from the SharePoint site. You'll notice that the web address for the file is displayed at the top of the web page though (hint- you didn't have a direct web address to the file before). Copy the full web address.
4. Now you can go to your desktop, and follow the usual steps to create a Chrome shortcut by RIGHT CLICK/ NEW/ SHORTCUT and accomplish your objective. For whatever reason pasting the web address which you copied from the page you added (in steps A & B above) works, when trying to paste what you copied from step 3 above would not. 
5. Now you can just distribute that shortcut to your team in whatever way works- thumb drive, share drive, WinZip, etc. Anyone who has SharePoint access to the file will be able to use this new desktop shortcut now to get to the same file. 

At some point I hope the SharePoint development team will learn about this problem and make it easier for people to make desktop shortcuts to the various files they need to work on within SharePoint. If or when that happens this workaround will probably no longer make sense to anyone and this great discovery will be rendered obsolete 🙂