Using Photo (Windows Store app) to browse images in local network

I know that by using "Open As..." from desktop,  I can use the Windows Store app "Photo" to browse photos on a folder.  But I want more than that.  I want to be able to browse a whole shared directory in my local network.  In fact, without that kind of feature, Photo app is useless to me.

Eventually I found a way to make a local network shared folder showing up in Photo app, but the process is so clumsy that I doubt any regular user will do the same.  Nevertheless, I did it and made it work.

Goal: Add network folder in Libraries/Pictures folder

The basic idea is including the network folder you want to browse in the Pictures Libraries folder of your machine.  No HomeGroup is invovled.  You can do that by:

• Right click on "Pictures" of "Libraries", and select properties.

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• Click [Add...] button, and then select your network folder, and click [OK] to commit.

You would hope that things can be this simple.  Unfortunately, after you click that OK button, you will probably get:

In order to add a network folder, it has to be indexed.  The help file instruct you to make a folder "Always Available Offline" by right click on a folder on Windows Explorer, and select ""Always Available Offline".  That DID NOT work on my newly brought Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, as the system will tried to process that and at the end prompt you a dialog box saying the "Offline Files" system service is not running, and prompted you to restart the machine.  And for me, no matter how many time I restarted, I still couldn't got the same error message.

So I look under the Local Service MMC, and found the service "Local Files".  I tried to start the service, and got the error message saying: "Cannot start the service Offline Files on local computer.. Error 0x80070003: The system cannot find this path."

Then I found this post, and in that post, I found the following instruction to reset the CSC database:

1) Open Schedule tasks under Administrative Tools

2) Right click in 'Task Scheduler' and select 'Create task...'

3) Name: {Any Name}

User Account:

Click 'Change user or group' and type SYSTEM in the text box, clicking OK.

4) In Actions, Click New.

5) In 'Program/script', type:

c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe

6) In 'Add Arguments', type:

/crd c:\Windows\CSC /s /q

7) Click 'OK'

8) Click 'Task Scheduler Library' to be able to see the created task

9) Right click in that task and select 'Run'.

10) Restart machine.

So I reboot, I found the Local Files service running properly, and I was ABLE to set a network folder to "Always Available Offline".  After then, I can add that network folder to Pictures Library.  With that I can browse photo of that network folder in Photo app.

All seems well, except that there's something you HAVE TO DO:  You have to:

• Right click on the folder you previous set to "Always Available Offline", and UNCHECK the "Always Available Offline" setting so that the folder isn't available for offline browsing anymore.

The reason of doing that is because from the beginning we DO NOT want that network to be "always available offline", because that actually means the Sync Center of your computer will keep a local copy of ALL THE FILES in that network folder on your computer.  If your shared network folder has 1Tb of content, .... well, you get the idea.  All will did was force the computer to index that network folder, and thus trick Pictures Library to allow adding this folder in it.  Once we done the trick, we need to stop this file sync process continue.

In fact, by the time you do that, there's always files synchronized.  So the next step is to remove these files.  You an check that by going to "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Sync Center\Offline Files" .  In the you should file the folder you previously marked as "always available online".  Right click on that entry and select "Stop Sync ...." and that should stop the synchronization for good.

The final step is removing those files that already been synchronized into your local offline files folder.  For that, you select "Manage Offline files" on the Control Panel page, and in there you click on "View your offline files".

In there, you should open the "Computers" icon, and then keep navigate until you reach your shared folder.  With that, you right click on the file and select "Delete Offline Copy", that should delete all the copy from your local machine.

And with that, you can finally use Photo app to navigate your photos using a touch friendly UI.  Why Microsoft can't come up with a better way to provide this functionality is .... a mystery.