SharePoint and Vista: a problem with “Explorer View” and “Create list from spreadsheet”

We have recently encountered a problem with some of the SharePoint (WSS or MOSS) features not working properly in Windows Vista:

  • When users attempt to display a document library in the Explorer view within the web application that uses Kerberos authentication, nothing happens: Explorer view never comes up and no errors displayed either
  • Or, when users attempt to display a document library within the web application that uses NTLM authentication, they get "Your client does not support opening this list with Windows Explorer" error;
  • When users attempt to create list from Excel spreadsheet they get "Method 'Post' of object 'IOWSPostData' failed" error

After a lot of research and many unsuccessful attempts to fix these problems using various solutions found on the web, I have finally able to find a workaround that have worked on Windows Vista 32-bit.

Solutions that did not work in our situation:

  • Installing and enabling WebDav on IIS 7
  • Installing Desktop Experience on Windows 2008 server 64 bit
  • Modifying EXPTOOWS.XLA macro file to force using a different version number
  • Etc…

The workaround that worked:

  • Install hotfix KB945015 on the client machine to fix a bug caused by an extra forward slash mark (/)appended to the query path of a WebDAV PROPFIND request
  • Install Web folder hotfix on the client machine to get Vista map a drive to a web location on SharePoint
  • Map a "Web Network Location" on your PC to the root of the SharePoint site in question and ensure that you save the credentials

This workaround only worked for Windows Vista 32-bit.



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