Hack 30 Take Your Work on the Go with Offline Files and the Briefcase Two ways that road warriors can more easily take files with them when they leave home or the officeand synchronize files back to their desktop PCs when they return . If you use a laptop on a corporate LAN, you might sometimes store files on the network and forget to bring them home or with you on the road. This frequently happens to people who, like me, are absent-minded on occasion (or more than one occasionafter all, I once left my car keys in the refrigerator). If you have XP Professional, you can use its Offline Files feature to automatically synchronize folders from the LAN to your notebook so that whenever you leave the office the latest version of your files will be available. To enable the use of offline files, choose My Computer Figure 3-21. Enabling offline files![]()
As you can see, there are a number of options on this tab for using offline files. Here's what you need to know about each to take best advantage of offline file synchronization:
After you've set up your laptop to use Offline Files, you next have to choose the specific folders on the server that you want to make available to you offline. Open Windows Explorer, right-click on the network folder, and choose Make Available Offline. If there are subfolders in the folder, you'll be asked whether you want to make those subfolders available as well. After you do this, when you log off the network, the server copies to your laptop all the folders you've marked . They'll be available to you in the same way as any other folders are, via your applications, Windows Explorer, in My Computer, or My Network Places. Work with them on your laptop, and then, when you next connect to the network, they'll be synchronized to the network folders, depending on the options you've chosen . 3.11.1 On-Demand and Scheduled Synchronizations If you'd like, rather than synchronize when you log off the network, you can synchronize manually on demand, or you can set up a schedule for automated synchronization. To synchronize on demand manually, in Windows Explorer choose Tools 3.11.2 Use the Briefcase for Mobile File TransfersOffline Files works only if you have XP Professional and if you have a local area network to which both your laptop and desktop connect. But if you need to synchronize files between two computers not on a networkeven if you don't have XP Professionalthere is still a way to way to synchronize files between computers: use the Briefcase. It's not as easy to use as Offline Files, but it still does the trick. It synchronizes files between your two machines by using removable media such as a CD or Zip drive.
To use the Briefcase to transfer files from a laptop to a desktop computer, first format the media you're going to use if it needs to be formatted. With the removable media in the drive, open Windows Explorer, click on the media's disk folder, and choose File Copy into the Briefcase the files you're going to want to transfer to your laptop and keep synchronized between the two computers. You can copy files from different folders. If you've going to add files to the Briefcase over time, or if you expect the files in the Briefcase to grow, make sure to leave enough extra room on the disk. Eject the media from your desktop. (If you get an error message when trying to eject a CD, close Windows Explorer and then eject it.) Place the media in your laptop, and move or copy the Briefcase folder to the laptop's hard disk. Remember to move or copy the entire folder, not the individual files in the folder. Work on the files as you would normally. Add or delete files as well. When it's time to transfer the files back to your PC, copy the Briefcase from your laptop to removable media, and put the removable media in your desktop. Open the Briefcase folder. To synchronize all the files back to your desktop, choose Briefcase Figure 3-22. Synchronizing all the files in a Briefcase back to a desktop PC![]() 3.11.3 A Closer Look at the BriefcaseIt's a good idea to examine the files in your Briefcase before you synchronize, so that you know the status of each. As you can see in Figure 3-23, you'll see whether each file has been updated and therefore needs to be updated on your current machine, or whether it was unchanged. The Briefcase folder also shows you the file's original location on the computer, as well as other details such as file size. Figure 3-23. The Briefcase folder![]() Right-click on any file in the Briefcase, and choose Properties
3.11.4 See Also
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