Fix “View in File Explorer” missing in SharePoint Online Issue

Problem: “View in File Explorer” option is missing in SharePoint Online.

How to enable view in file explorer in SharePoint Online?

The Explorer View or View in File Explore feature in SharePoint Online provides an easy File Explorer-like interface to manage files in your SharePoint document libraries. If you’re missing the “View in File Explorer” option when you open a library on a SharePoint Online site, don’t worry! There’s an easy fix. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to fix the View in File Explorer option, so you can use it to quickly access/copy/paste your files and folders in SharePoint Online.

view in file explorer missing in sharepoint online

Solution

While the recommended way to efficiently manage files in SharePoint Online is using the OneDrive client, You may need the “View in File Explorer” in SharePoint Online modern document libraries in some cases. Several factors can cause this issue, but we’ll walk you through some troubleshooting steps to help get that link back.

Browsers Supported:

View in File Explorer feature still uses ActiveX technology. So, it works with Internet Explorer (32-bit version) and Microsoft Edge (build 93+) but is not supported in browsers like Safari on macOS, Mozilla Firefox, etc. For Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, Make sure you have implemented the steps: Enable View in File Explorer in Microsoft Edge

Check View in File Explorer is enabled on your Tenant:

There are chances you may have this feature disabled at the tenant level. Use this PowerShell script to check if it’s enabled. If not, you can enable it.

#Admin Center URL
$AdminCenterURL = "https://crescent-admin.sharepoint.com"

#Connect to SharePoint Online
Connect-SPOService -Url $AdminCenterURL

#Check the current status of View in Explorer Feature
Get-SPOTenant | Select ViewInFileExplorerEnabled

If it’s not enabled, You can enable it with:

#Enable Explorer View in SharePoint Online
Set-SPOTenant -ViewInFileExplorerEnabled $true

Also, Enable persistent cookies for View with Explorer.

#Enable Persistent Cookies For Explorer View
Set-SPOTenant -UsePersistentCookiesForExplorerView $true

If you want to disable view in file explorer in SharePoint Online, use:

#Disable View in File Explorer
Set-SPOTenant -ViewInFileExplorerEnabled $False

You can map SharePoint Online libraries to a network drive as an alternate solution: How to Map a SharePoint Online Document Library to a Network Drive?

Salaudeen Rajack

Salaudeen Rajack - SharePoint Expert with Two decades of SharePoint Experience. Love to Share my knowledge and experience with the SharePoint community, through real-time articles!

2 thoughts on “Fix “View in File Explorer” missing in SharePoint Online Issue

  • when I execute this command Set-SPOTenant -ViewInFileExplorerEnabled $true, i get the following error
    Set-SPOTenant : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name ‘ViewInFileExplorerEnabled’.

    And when I check with GET-SPOTENANT, it shows the result of ViewInFileExplorerEnabled as Blank

    Is there a way around this?
    We do not want to enable Sync for some of the libraries because of the pre-known issues with huge library sync and users with slow or intermittent internet issues

    Reply
    • Same issue on my end

      Reply

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