How to remove “Open with (Windows) Explorer” button from Document Library’s Ribbon Menu

Recently I had come across a situation in which customer wanted to remove the “Open with (Windows) Explorer” button from the Document Library’s Ribbon Menu.

Following are the steps to remove this button from Ribbon

1. Create an empty SharePoint 2010 Solution, you may give your favorite name to it
2. Add a feature by right clicking on the Features in Solution Explorer
3. Right click on the Project and add a new item, choose empty element and name it
4. Open the Elements.xml file from the newly added item
5. Copy & paste the following XML into the Elements.xml file

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Elements xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
       <CustomAction
         Id="RemoveRibbonButton"
         Location="CommandUI.Ribbon">
              <CommandUIExtension>
                     <CommandUIDefinitions>
                           <CommandUIDefinition
                             Location="Ribbon.Library.Actions.OpenWithExplorer" />
                     </CommandUIDefinitions>
              </CommandUIExtension>
       </CustomAction>
</Elements>

Deploy the Solution and observe that “Open with Explorer” button will be removed from the Ribbon.

Please check out Default Server Ribbon Customization Locations for more location details.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 13, 2014
  That's for sharing this Script. One more question, is there a setting to limit this custom action depending on the permissions. Example. I would like to hide this Open with Explorer option excepts for site or library owners in SharePoint 2013.