Windows 7 : Using a Windows Network - Sharing Resources (part 1) - Sharing with a Homegroup

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 be able to share resources from your own computer, although in many companies you can, and it’s useful to know how to do this so that you can easily give co-workers access to files that you use in common.

On the other hand, on a home or office workgroup network, any Computer Administrator user can set up and manage file and printer sharing.

Before you decide 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.

You can elect to share your files with others in several different ways:

• If your computer is part of a homegroup, you can store files you’d like to share in one of your libraries, and share your libraries with the homegroup.

• You can move files to a folder under \Users\Public, which is called the Public user profile folder. Here, anyone can access them automatically without your having to do anything else but enable sharing the Public folder, as described shortly.

• You can elect to share any folder anywhere within your own user profile; the files or folders can reside anywhere within your own profile folder found under \Users on the hard disk.

• You can create new, separate folders on your hard disk and share them under their own share names.

In the past, it was more common to create separate folders and share them independently. To some extent this makes it easier for other users to locate shared folders, since each folder has its own name. Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft suggests “sharing in place,” using any of the first three methods. These are easier to set up, but it’s perhaps a bit harder on people who want to use shared materials, since it all has to be found within the single shared Users folder. Any of the methods are acceptable, though; it really just depends on how you prefer to organize your files.

The next sections describe how to share folders these various ways.

1. Sharing with a Homegroup

If your computer is a member of a homegroup, you can share the entire contents of any of your libraries so that the other members of the homegroup can see and use files in your libraries, but not change them. Use the following procedure:

1.	Click the network icon in the taskbar and select Open Network and Sharing Center, or click Start, Control Panel, View Network Status and Tasks (under Network and Internet).
2.	Click Choose Homegroup and Sharing Options.
3.	Check the libraries that you want to share, and uncheck any that you don’t want to share, as shown in Figure 1. Click Save Changes when you’re done. Figure 1. You can change your mind about sharing or not sharing your libraries and printers with the homegroup at any time.

This method shares libraries read-only: All other homegroup members can see, view, play, and print any of the files in your shared libraries, but they can’t change, delete, rename, or add to them.

Setting Permissions for HomeGroup Sharing

If you want to let other users change the files in one of your libraries, or if you want to enable or prevent access to a specific library, folder, or individual file, use this procedure:

Editing Permissions for Specific People

The fourth choice, Specific People, lets you set permissions for yourself, for the homegroup, for Everyone, and for individual user accounts, using the permissions list shown in the File Sharing dialog box, shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. You can control the type of access to a shared library, folder, or file that is granted to your homegroup, and in some cases to specific user accounts.

Any entries that you add for individual users won’t apply when other users in your homegroup try to use the shared resource, because member computers always use a common built-in account. Entries for individual users only affect access from computers that aren’t members of the homegroup, and from computers not running Windows 7.

If you have computers on your network that run older versions of Windows, and thus can’t be members of the homegroup, you can give their users easy access to your shared files in either of two ways:

• You can turn off Password Protected Sharing on your computer. Then, add Everyone to the permission list. The other computers will get access to the files this way.

• If you want to leave Password Protected Sharing turned on on your computer, either create accounts for each of the other computers’ users on your computer, using their account names and passwords, or create a single user account named, for example, “sharing” on your computer, assign a password to it, and have all of the other users use this account when they connect over the network. Add this account to the permissions list, and grant it Read or Read/Write access.

To change the permissions granted to a user or group listed in the File Sharing dialog box, shown in Figure 2, change the entry in the Permission Level column to Read, Read/Write, or Remove, which removes the entry from the list. To add a new entry, select a name from the drop-down list next to the Add button, then click the Add button. You can then change the new entry’s Permission Level.

Your account is listed as the file’s or folder’s owner, and you can’t change this entry.