File Transfer Save To

 

 

Registry locations	HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Communicator\FtReceiveFolder
Allowed registry values	Any valid folder path
Registry value type	REG_SZ
Default setting	%userprofile%\Documents\My Received Files

 

Any time someone tries to transfer a file to you using Microsoft Lync a message similar to this appears in your Conversation Window:

 

 

If you double-click the command Double-click here to start transfer then the file will automatically be copied to the default "received files" folder on your computer. Alternatively, you can click Save as and save the file to a folder of your choice, or click Decline to cancel the file transfer altogether.

 

The default folder for files received by Microsoft Lync is %userprofile% \Documents\My Received Files; that’s the folder Lync will use for storing files, and also the folder Lync will look in if you select View Received Files from the File menu. But what if you’d like to configure a different folder to be your default folder for files received by Microsoft Lync? That’s fine: just go ahead and configure a different folder to be your default folder for files received by Microsoft Lync. From within Microsoft Lync you can assign a new default folder by clicking the Browse button on the File Saving tab of the Options dialog box, then selecting the desired folder:

 

 

Don’t like clicking Browse buttons? In that case, simply modify the HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator\FtReceiveFolder registry value, specifying the complete path to the folder in question; this path can be either a local path (for example, C:\Downloads\Lync) or a UNC path (e.g., \\atl-fs-001\users\kenmyer).

 

Ah, good question: what does happen if you enter the path to a folder that doesn’t exist (for example, C:\NoSuchFolder)? Well as long as Lync is able to create the specified folder then it will simply go ahead and create that folder and then download the file. For example, suppose you specified C:\NoSuchFolder as your file transfer folder, and suppose that folder C:\NoSuchFolder doesn’t exist. That's not a problem at all: Lync will go ahead and create the folder for you, then stash the received file in this new folder. Is that service or what?

But what if you configured X:\NoSuchFolder and your computer doesn’t actually have a drive X? In that case you'll see the following message box:

 

 

Assuming you click OK you'll then be given the chance to save the file to a real folder:

 

 

As noted earlier, you can modify the folder used for file transfers by manipulating the FtReceiveFolder registry value. For example, the following PowerShell script retrieves the current value of FtReceiveFolder on the local computer. If you'd rather retrieve this value from a remote computer, simply set the value of the variable $computer to the name of that remote computer. For example:

 

$computer = "atl-ws-001.litwareinc.com"

 

Here's how you can determine the current file transfer receive folder:

 

$computer = "."

 

$registry = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey("CurrentUser", $computer)

$key = $registry.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator", $True)

 

Write-Host "File transfer Save to:",($key.GetValue("FtReceiveFolder",$null))

 

And here's a way to change the file transfer receive folder. In this case, the script sets the folder location to C:\FileTransfers:

 

$computer = "."

 

$registry = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey("CurrentUser", $computer)

$key = $registry.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Communicator", $True)

 

$key.SetValue("FtReceiveFolder","C:\FileTransfers","String")