Scripting sharepoint lists “Connect to Outlook” stssync links

I was asked to figure this out, took me a while but i found quite a nice approach to make it super easy.

The official Technet on the matter,  explains the how to phrase the stssync link correctly , after fighting with it..unicode etc.. i finally though of something easy.

1. Locate the list you want to connect to.

2. Press “connect to outlook” button.

3. Approve in outlook…

4. Right click the newly added list & choose share “List name”

5. Mail the share offer to yourself .. then check out the message headers.

6. Notice the “x-sharing-config-url” , this is the exact syssync reference link that you need 🙂 clean and easy & without any hassle or unicode stuff…

7. Enjoy distributing this , you can use outlook.exe /share stssync://url , or use a Link in a webpage to make the users add the lists to their outlook.

That’s it 🙂

14 thoughts on “Scripting sharepoint lists “Connect to Outlook” stssync links”

  1. Garr… I know this is dated, but I needed this today and I’m missing something. I can’t see the stssync code when I email the calendar to myself. I set the message header to show, but no code. Using Outlook 2010.

    Thanks for all help!

    1. Viewing the headers with Outlook 2010 is a little tricky … I found the best way is to select Actions > View in Browser. This gives you a neat little web page that shows something like:

      “This SharePoint List is supported on any computer with a compatible program, such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 or later. To connect to this SharePoint List, copy and paste the following Web address into your Web browser:

      stssync://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”

      … And there’s your URL

  2. oh man, here is a shot in the dark. I love this tutorial, works fantastic. The problem is that my users are ID10T sufferers and making this as simple as possible would be best. Do you know of anyway that I can make the calendar connection use the currently logged in credentials? I have been testing it and the best I can get is prompting for only a password, but I had to first add generic credentials to the credentials manager in windows 7.

    1. Hey Randy,
      To which URL are your users getting to ?
      if that URL is different from the sharepoint server, then you should make sure to populate that name into the “Intranet Sites” within internet options, so that default credentials are passed to it.

      ilantz

  3. OK, so I would have to get the URL into the intranet sites first in order for that to work.
    I use the external URL of the share point site because a lot of my users are on laptops and are not always in the office. So I use for example: http://remote.domain.com instead of the server name or intranet name site.

    Thanks for the tip. Ill be testing this out.

  4. For SP2010 + Outlook 2016 here are some updates.
    4. Share the calendar to myself from within Outlook perhaps? This doesn’t need to be from SP. Rt-click imported calendar > Share > Share Calendar. No need to hit go; just check the headers from this preview.
    5. Check out the message headers. (In Outlook 2016: from the open email, File > Properties > Internet Headers)

  5. I keep coming back to this, lolz.
    Trick to get the stssync url: use Internet Explorer. Once you launch the list through ‘Connect to Outlook’, a popup asks you ‘Do you want to allow this website…?’ – STOP! – and copy the ‘Address’ shown :). Ta-da

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