(Cross-Post) Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer preview: March update

(Originally posted at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/storage-explorer-march-update/)

Today we’re happy to announce the March update of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer (preview), which includes support for Tables and Queues.

After our first release, we received hundreds of requests asking for Table and Queue support. Based on this feedback, we’re extremely excited to share this new version of Storage Explorer with the following features:

• Table support
• Queue support
• SAS features, including SAS support for Storage Account
• Performance improvements
• Updated look and feel
• Update notifications

Tables

For tables, you’ll be able to view entities inside a container as well as write queries against them. You can also easily insert common query snippets, such as the ability to filter by partition key and row key, or retrieving based on a Timestamp period.

Once you find the entity or entities you’re looking for, you can manually edit the values of its properties or delete it. Lastly, you can export the contents of your table to a CSV file, or import existing CSV files into any table. You could also copy tables from one Storage Account to another if you’d prefer to keep the transfers server-side.

Queues

For queues, we focused on the basic features. You can peek at the most recent 32 messages. From there you can view a specific message, enqueue new messages, dequeue the top message, or clear the entire queue.

SAS features

Both tables and queues support the same SAS functionality as blob containers: you can create SAS URIs for queues and tables, and also connect to a specific queue or table by providing a SAS key.

With this release, you’ll be able to generate Shared Access Signatures for Storage Accounts. Additionally, you’ll have the ability to connect to Storage Accounts by providing a SAS URI for the Storage Account. The SAS generation and connection features are also available for Tables and Queues.

To generate a SAS URI, simply right-click on the Storage Account and select “Get Shared Access Signature…”; to attach the resource, right-click on the parent “Storage Accounts” node and select “Attach Account using SAS.”

Update notifications

Lastly, starting with this version of Storage Explorer you’ll receive notifications for new updates for the application. These will appear as an infobar message linking to the latest version on storageexplorer.com.

Summary

While we’re excited to finally share these features with you, our work is not done yet – we haven’t forgotten about File Shares! We’ll also continue to add features to Blob Containers, Tables, and Queues. If you have any suggestions or requests for features you’d like to see in Storage Explorer, you can send us feedback directly from the application.

Let us know what you think!

-The Storage Explorer Team