Directly accessing a network share

There are times when you need to access a network share, but you don’t need to have it mounted as a drive. There is an easy way to do this and here are the steps.

First, go to File Explorer. This is the folder at the bottom of your task bar in Windows 11:

Windows 11 File Explorer button
You’ll get something that looks similar to this:
File explorer window
At the top, where it shows “Home”, you will want to put the address of the network share you want to access:
Network share to access via file explorer
If you have been granted access, once you hit return, it should populate File Explorer with the folders in that share. Then, once you are finished with what you are doing and you close out File Explorer, that share will not be mounted as a drive. This is just a quick way to access a network share. If you have any questions about this, please do not hesitate to contact us.