Using Shared Folders

File sharing lets users on a network browse through and use files and folders, no matter on which computer's hard drive the files actually reside. The "look and feel" is exactly the same.

Let's say I want to share a folder named C:\bookstuff. I have to give it a share name by which it'll be known on the network. For its share name, I might give the folder the share name "book," as shown in Figure 17.3.

Figure 17.3. Sharing a folder on my computer.

When other network users browse through their My Network Places display, they will see that Book is a shared folder attached to my computer. It looks like any folder on their own computers.

If they open it, they'll see the same folders and file listings I see in c:\bookstuff, as illustrated in Figure 17.4. The information about filenames, dates, and contents is sent over the network. If anyone drags a file into this folder, all other users will see it appear there. If anyone edits a file in this shared folder, the next time another user opens the file, they'll get the changed version. That's network file sharing in a nutshell; the rest is just a matter of details.

Figure 17.4. A network user examining the shared folder (left) sees the same files the owner of the shared folder sees (right).

On home and small office workgroup networks, you may not even need to go to the trouble to set up shared folders, because Windows automatically makes each computer's "Shared Documents" folder available over the network, as shown in Figure 17.5

Figure 17.5. Your computer's Shared Documents folder is shared with the network by default. You can view other computers' Shared Documents in My Network Places.

TIP

If you put files into your Shared Documents folder, not only will other users of your computer be able to view and use these files, so will other users on your network.

Likewise, you can get to other computers' Shared Documents by looking for folders named "SharedDocs" in My Network Places.

This is a pretty intuitive way to organize things, and you might not need to set up or use any other shared folders.