Sharing Resources

On a large corporate LAN, most important network resources, shared folders, and printers are set up and tightly controlled by network managers. You might not even be able to share resources from your own computer. This helps control the cost of maintaining and managing the network, but it doesn't help you and your co-workers if you want to share files for a project among yourselves. You might have to plead with your network manager to prepare a common shared folder for you.

On the other hand, you might be able to set up the file sharing yourself. In a workgroup network, it's almost certain you can. Administrators and members of the Administrators and Power Users groups can manage file and printer sharing.

Before deciding to share resources, you should give some thought to just what you want to share, how you want to organize it, and who should have permission to see, use, or change files you've published in the shared folders.