In SharePoint 2016 / 2013, I tried to open a document library via ‘Open with Explorer‘ that was enabled as shown below:

But unfortunately, when I clicked ‘Open with Explorer‘, I got the below warning!

We’re having a problem opening this location in File Explorer, Add this web site to your Trusted sites list and try again

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Cause

Although I have added the site URL to the trusted site, unfortunately, I still can’t use ‘Open with Explorer‘ option!

To investigate this issue, you should check the server & client settings as the following:

At Server setting,

This issue might occur in case,

• The Desktop Experience feature was not installed on the SharePoint Server.
• The Desktop Experience feature was installed, but the web client service stopped.
• The Root Explicit Inclusions Managed Path is not configured Properly in Central Administration.

At client setting,

The ‘Open with Explorer’ option is disabled or grayed out

In the case of using browsers which don’t support ActiveX like Google Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or some of IE versions with 64 bit like IE 10 on Windows 7.

The ‘Open with Explorer’ option is disabled or grayed out because of this option is not supported in such browsers which don’t support ActiveX, and in this case, you should use 32-bit versions of Internet Explorer or Internet Explorer 11 (32/64 bit).

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Solution

In WFE SharePoint server, you should make sure that the Desktop Experience feature is installed and the web client service is started properly as the following:

 Add Desktop experience feature

• Open Server Manager > Manage > Add Roles and Features.

• Select Features  > below User Interfaces and Infrastructure > Desktop Experience.

• Click Next then Install.

• Restart the Server.

Start WebClient service.

• Go back to Services by clicking  Run > Services.msc.

• Start WebClient Service.

• Now, Open the site > Go to the document library > Click on “Open with Explorer”

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The Root Explicit Inclusions Managed Path is not configured Properly in Central Administration.

The “Open with Explorer” is working fine in sites with wildcard inclusion managed path. but it has some trouble with explicit inclusion managed paths that its root path is not configured properly in central administration.

Example:

• Consider you have  Qassas/site1 and Qassas/site2as Explicit Inclusion managed paths, so you should make sure that the Qassas has been added as Explicit Inclusion.
• Open Central Administration > Manage web application > Select your web application > From the above ribbon > select Managed Path.

• Make sure that the root `Qassas` as `Explicit Managed path` is already added to the managed path settings. if not try to add it as shown below.

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Applies To

• SharePoint 2016.
• SharePoint 2013.