So we are done building your Office 365 website, and we would like to save a copy of the files to a local disk. We open SharePoint Designer and realized that we are able to see the files and folders. However we are not able to just right click and save the files to a Windows directory. What do we do know?
In order to be able to copy files from Office 365 to Windows explorer, we need to map the Office 365 website to a local drive. This allows Windows explorer to navigate the folder structure as if the files are local to the computer. Once this is done, we can copy the files from the Office 365 website to a local drive.
How to map Office 365 to a local drive:
- Open Windows Explorer
- Right-click on Network and then click Map Network Drive
- Click on a link (bottom) that reads “Connect to a Web site that you can store your documents and pictures”
- Click Next
- Select Choose a custom network location and click next
- Enter the full path to your website. Similar to http://www.mysite.com and check Connect using different credentials
- Enter your office 365 credentials
As a side note, you can also save your website as a template. The template is saved as a single file that contains all the content (.aspx, master pages, and images) files. In order to see the individual files, you would need to open the file using Visual Studio 2010 or newer.
