Doc command/Help button don't work while "Current Folder" is in a mapped network drive

When my Current Folder (working directory) is in a mapped network drive (regardless of whether I've added the current folder to the MATLAB path), neither the "doc " command nor the Help button (in the Ribbon) work. Nothing happens at all. I discovered that the command

web("https:\\www.mathworks.com")

produces the following warning in that case:

Warning: MATLAB was unable to launch your System web browser:

The current directory is invalid.

> In web>displayWarningMessage (line 172)

In web (line 114)

Out of curiosity I changed my current folder to one on my local C: drive; when I did that, both the "web" command and the "doc" commands successfully opened the system Web browser (as they should).

Why would my current folder location make a difference? Is there anything I can do to fix it? Is this a bug?

[Matt J]

Try restarting Matlab, but do NOT run as administrator.

[Matthew McMahon]

Thanks for the idea. I wasn't running as administrator before. I tried running as an administrator, and on startup got the following message:

Warning: Name is nonexistent or not a directory: Z:\Projects\MATLAB

In administrator mode, I couldn't even access that directory in the Current Folder explorer. Running as a non-admin, I have the same issue as before.

[Matt J]

I idly wonder if it is related to this post,

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/2151725-accessing-network-drives-from-within-matlab?s_tid=srchtitle

[Image Analyst]

Does that Z folder show up in your startup.m file, or in the path list if you click the Set Path button on the tool ribbon? If so, remove it.

[Walter Roberson]

I cannot say that I am astonished; there have been several mapped-drive glitches showing up in the last half-year.

[Matthew McMahon]

@Image Analyst The Z:\ folder is not in the startup.m file or the path list.

[Matthew McMahon]

Thanks @Walter Roberson. I have submitted it as a bug report.

[Matthew McMahon]

For the benefit of any MathWorks staff viewing this, I tried downloading the offline Help documentation today. Since the new offline help leverages the system default Web browser, it has the same issue as the online help.

[Image Analyst]

Please attach this file "C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2024b\toolbox\local\pathdef.m" so we can inspect it.

[Matthew McMahon]

@Iman See my answer below. Thanks.

Answer 1

[Matthew McMahon]

Sorry - I see I left this thread unresolved. To wrap this up, I did reach out to MathWorks support and in going back and forth with them I discovered the underlying problem. For some reason, mapping the "Z" drive in Windows Explorer did not successfully map the drive in a way that was visible from the Windows Command Prompt. The workaround is to map the drives explicitly from the Command Prompt using the "net use" command. I set up a batch file to run at Windows login (using the Windows task scheduler utility) that does this mapping explicitly. Now MATLAB opens the help documentation no matter what folder I am working in.