SkyDrive tip: Two methods for making SkyDrive Desktop available to apps that don’t support it

If you’ve used Windows 8 and the SkyDrive app for Windows Desktop for any length of time, you’ve come across the problem where you want to retrieve something from or save something to SkyDrive, but the app you’re using doesn’t support the SkyDrive folder that sits and syncs on your computer.  This generally occurs when an app is written specifically for the Windows 8 Desktop mode instead of a pure Windows 8 app.  When you look through the usual suspects of save or retrieve locations, SkyDrive is just not available anywhere.

But, you can still utilize SkyDrive with these apps using your preferred method below.  I’m not sure why the SkyDrive Desktop doesn’t do the first option for you automatically.  Might make a great feature request.

The Best Way – Adding to Libraries

The best way to allow access to SkyDrive for those apps that don’t support it, is to add your SkyDrive folder to the list of Windows Libraries.

To do this:

The Other Way – Shortcut on the Desktop

If you want another way to accomplish the same task (i.e., make SkyDrive available to non-supporting apps), you can create a shortcut to the SkyDrive folder on your desktop.

To do this: