How to share files and folders in Windows XP

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Sharing is good, right? Your mom taught you to share, didn’t she? Everything you need to know about sharing you learned in kindergarten like how you can share your favorite crayon with your best friend and get back a gnarled blob of stunted wax, covered in mysterious goo. Windows XP Home supports four kinds of sharing. Unfortunately, “sharing” means different things in different contexts, and the devil (as you surely know by now) can be in Windows’ details. Here’s a quick guide to the four kinds of sharing that you find lurking in various parts of Windows, how to make them work, and what they really entail. Sharing on one computer The simplest form of sharing is with other people who use your computer: They log on with a user name that’s different from yours, and you want them to be able to get a specific file or folder. In fact, in Windows XP Home, just about anybody can get to any of your files, at any time. Sharing with other people on your computer is more about making it easy for them to find the files they need, as opposed to preventing them from seeing files that they shouldn’t see. Thus, I think of this simple approach to sharing as “sticking your file or folder in a place where other people may think to look for it.” It’s all about location, location, location.

Windows has a folder called Shared Documents that looks and acts a lot like My Documents. Inside Shared Documents, for example, you find folders called Shared Music and Shared Pictures. The Shared Documents folder has three cool but minor characteristics that make it a special place:  -  Windows Explorer makes it easy to get to the Shared Documents folder with a link to Shared Documents in the Other Places box on the left side of the screen. A Shared Music link shows up on the left when you’re in My Music. A Shared Pictures appears in My Pictures, too.  -  The Shared Documents folder is shared across your network (if you have one).  -  Limited users, such as the Guest account, can get into the Shared Documents folder but not into other My Documents folders (, Article 6 explains accounts). Aside from those three minor points, the only real advantage to putting a file or folder in Shared Documents is the location: People may think to look there when they go rooting around looking for stuff. To put a file or folder in the Shared Documents folder and thus make it “shared” in this sense of the term you have to physically move it. The following is the easiest way to do that:

1. Bring up Windows Explorer (choose, say, Start -> My Documents), and click on the files and/or folders that you want to put in the Shared Documents folder.

2. In the File and Folder Tasks box on the left, choose Move this file or Move this folder.

3. In the Move Items dialog box, pick a location in or under the Shared Documents folder where you want the chosen files and/or folders to go, and then click Move. The Windows XP documentation suggests that you click and drag the file(s) and/or folder(s) that you want to share to the Shared Documents folder in the Other Places box on the left of the Windows Explorer screen. I strongly recommend that you not follow those instructions. Dropping the files in the wrong “Other” place is too easy. More than that, using drag and drop gives you no opportunity to see any folders that may be sitting underneath the Shared Documents folder. That’s a sure way to stack tons of unrelated files in one messy folder. It’s also an invitation to disaster or at least massive confusion if Windows encounters duplicated folder names. After you move the file or folder, you may have a hard time finding it! For example, if you use Word to create a document and then you move the document to the Shared Documents folder, Word isn’t notified that the file has been moved. In Word, if you choose File and then click the name of the document, Word won’t be able to find it. Ditto if you use Word’s Task Pane to try to open the document. The only way you can open the document is via the File -> Open dialog box.

Sneak-in-any-time-you-like sharing The Windows Shared Documents approach to sharing files on a single computer works, but it really doesn’t do much, particularly in Windows XP Home where any user (except a Limited user; see In, Article 6) can get into any folder (except those marked Private) with a couple of clicks. Unless you take very specific steps to make a folder private, any file you put on a computer running Windows XP Home is immediately and easily available to anyone who can stumble up to the mouse. Other people who use your computer may take a gander inside the Shared Documents folder to find what they’re looking for, but Shared Documents is only a convenient dumping ground. There’s no security, no privacy, no way, no how. Sharing on your network This is real sharing. Windows XP lets you identify specific folders (or entire disk drives) that are to be shared with other people on your network. You can also tell Windows whether those other people should be able to only read the files in the folders, or whether they should also be allowed to change the files. Windows XP does not allow you to share individual files across a network. You can either share a folder (which may include other folders and certainly includes files), or you can share an entire drive. But single files won’t work.

With Windows XP Home, the sharing choices are quite straightforward: A folder (or drive) is either shared or it isn’t. A shared folder (or drive) can be read-only or read-write. That’s it. Anybody on the network can get at a shared folder or drive. There’s no additional authorization, no secret password, no clandestine handshake, no list of who can get in and who can’t. In Windows XP Professional, security options are legion and chances are very good that you have little choice about security settings. That’s why there are network administrators, eh? Windows sets up the Shared Documents folder, detailed in the preceding two sections, for network sharing. So any files or folders that you move into the Shared Documents folder are “automagically” shared across the network you needn’t lift a finger. If you don’t mind lifting a finger once or twice, you can easily share a folder on your network:

1. Bring up Windows Explorer (for example, choose Start -> My Documents) and find the folder you want to share.

2. Right-click on the folder that you want to share and choose Sharing and Security.

3. In the folder’s Properties dialog box 4. Type a name that other people on the network will find enlightening. Officially, that name is known as a share name, but any ol’ moniker will work. 5. If you want to give read-write access to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who can get on the network, select the Allow Network Users to Change My Files check box. Click OK, and the shared folder becomes accessible from all the computers on your network. For example, if I choose Start -> My Network Places on a computer connected to the computer that holds the newly shared folder, Windows Explorer lets me get into that folder. When you share a folder on your network, all of the files and folders inside the shared folder are shared, too. Sharing an entire drive The process for sharing an entire drive is only slightly more difficult, but considerably more intimidating, than sharing a folder:

1. Choose Start -> My Computer to bring up My Computer in Windows Explorer.

2. Right-click the drive that you want to share. Note that you can share CD drives, diskette drives, and just about any kind of drive.

3. Choose Sharing and Security. Windows responds with a rather odd statement: To protect your computer from unauthorized access, sharing the root of a drive is not recommended. If you understand the risk but still want to share the root of the drive, click here. (Bafflegab alert: The root of a drive is the whole drive, including all the folders on the drive.) Setting up an entire drive for sharing (by right-clicking the drive choosing Sharing and Security) elicits a message from Windows about “the risk” of sharing an entire drive. Somewhat predictably, I’ve never found an explanation of “the risk” or its presumably dire consequences in any Windows documentation. Suffice it to say that granting access to an entire drive lets anybody on your network get at everything on the drive. If you’re sharing your C: drive, granting access to the drive probably includes the Windows folder (which contains Windows itself), the Program Files folders (which contain most of the programs on your computer), settings for everybody on the computer the whole enchilada.

4. Click “If you understand the risk but still want to share the root of the drive, click here.”

5. Select the Share This Folder on the Network check box. Type a name for the drive that’s intelligible to other people. If you want to give everyone on the network write access, select the Allow Network Users to Change My Files check box. Click OK and the drive becomes accessible from anywhere on the network. When sharing CD drives, Jaz drives, and even diskette drives, including a description of the drive in the share name is often a good idea. That way, you know what the drive can handle before you try to use it, so you won’t find yourself frustrated by repeated attempts to, oh, transfer your 2.3 MB resume to a 1.44 MB diskette. Recycling Files and Folders When you delete a file, it doesn’t go to that Big Bit Bucket in the Sky. An intermediate step exists between deletion and the Big Bit Bucket. It’s called purgatory oops. Wait a sec. Let me try that again. Ahem. The step between deletion and the Big Bit Bucket is called the Recycle Bin. When you delete a file or folder on your hard drive whether by selecting the file or folder in Windows Explorer and pushing the Delete key, or by right-clicking and choosing Delete Windows doesn’t actually delete anything. It marks the file or folder as being deleted but, other than that, doesn’t touch it at all. If you ever accidentally delete a file or a folder, you can easily recover the “deleted” file from the Recycle Bin. To rummage around in the Recycle Bin, and possibly bring a file back to life, double-click the Recycle Bin icon on the Windows desktop. To restore a file or folder (sometimes Windows calls it “undeleting”), click on the file or folder, and then click Restore This Item in the Recycle Bin Tasks box in the upper-left corner. You can select a bunch of files or folders by holding down the Ctrl key as you click. To reclaim the space being used by the files and folders in the Recycle Bin, click Empty the Recycle Bin in the Recycle Bin Tasks box. Windows asks if you really, really want to get rid of those files permanently. If you say yes, they’re gone. Kaput. You can never get them back again. Files and folders on floppy drives and on network drives really are deleted when you delete them. The Recycle Bin doesn’t work on floppies or on drives attached to other computers on your network.