What Type of Permissions Must Be Given So That a Folder Can Be Shared on the Network?
Sharing folders over a network on Windows computers gives access to files stored in the folder to other users on the network, known as a Homegroup in Windows. You can assign network sharing permissions to a single personal folder or all personal folders on your computer.
Other People Are Reading
-
Default Folder Permissions
-
The Windows default setting for the personal folders in your user account is private so that other users in your Homegroup can’t access your documents and files. Windows also includes default public folders and all items in these folders are automatically available to other users in the Homegroup. One way to share content is to move files into the public folders, but you can also share your personal folders with your Homegroup network by changing the folder’s permissions.
Folder Sharing Permissions
-
To share a folder with other users in the Homegroup, go to the folder location in the “Computer” folder -- or video, image and document library folders -- that you can open from the Windows Start menu. Right-click the folder, and then select “Share With” from the context menu. Alternatively, click and highlight the folder and click the “Share With” tab in the menu at the top of the window.
-
Folder Sharing Settings
-
After selecting the “Share With” feature, you can select the share settings for the folder. Selecting the “Homegroup (Read)” option allows all other users on the network to open the files in the folder, but they can’t change or delete the files. The “Homegroup (Read/Write)” option allows other users to open, modify and delete files in the shared folder. Selecting “Specific People” launches a sharing wizard that you can use to share the folder with one or more individual users on the Homegroup. During the setup process, Windows will prompt you to set a “read” or “read/write” permission level for each individual user.
Considerations
-
Sharing folders on your computer gives other users easy access to your documents, photos, videos and audio files. Sharing files saves the time and effort of transferring the files to USB flash drives or external hard drives and physically moving them to another computer. Before sharing folders and files, ensure that you don’t accidentally share personal items that you don’t want other users in your Homegroup to access. Create a separate folder without sharing permissions and move all private files to this folder. On office networks, the Homegroup is usually called a Workgroup, but it offers a similar “Share With” feature for sharing folders. In Workgroups, you can still only share personal folders on your computer; you won’t be able to share network folders if you don’t have administrator access.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Creatas Images/Creatas/Getty Images
