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→Creating Shared Folders with Windows Explorer
== Creating Shared Folders with Windows Explorer ==
Shared folders can be configured using Windows Explorer, simply by navigating to the folder to be shared, right clicking on the folder and selecting ''Properties'' from the menu. In the properties dialog, click on the ''Sharing'' tab to display and modify the current shared folder settings as illustrated in the following figure:
[[Image:windows_server_2008_file_sharing_properties.jpg|Configuring the Windows Server 2008 folder sharing properties]]
Within the sharing property panel, click on the ''Share...'' button to access the ''File Sharing'' dialog. Within this dialog, the users who may access this shared folder are specified. If file sharing has been restricted to users with local accounts and passwords, a list of users can be obtained by clicking on the down arrow. In this situation, select and add users, or select ''Everyone'' if access is to be made available to all users with local accounts:
[[Image:windows_server_2008_configuring_share_users.jpg|Selecting which users have share access to a folder]]
Once these settings are complete, click on the ''Share'' button to initiate the file sharing process. Once this initial phase of the share setup is complete a dialog will appear announcing this fact, listing the full Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to the shared folder and providing the option to email users to notify them of this fact:
[[Image:windows_server_2008_folder_shared.jpg|Selected folder is now shared]]
Having specified which users will have access to the folder the step is to enable the sharing of the folder, specify ''share permissions'' and configure a ''Share Name'' by which the folder will be referenced and accessed. In addition caching of shared files can be configured. Caching allows users to maintain local copies of shared files so that they can be accessed ''off-line'' (for example when the server hosting the files is not available to the user's local system). With caching configured, local copies of shared files are stored on the user's local system so that they can be accessed without a connection to the server. When a connection is re-established, any changes made to the local copy of the file are syncronized with the original copy on the server.
To configure these settings, click on the ''Advanced Sharing'' button to display the following dialog:
[[Image:windows_server_2008_advanced_file_share_settings.jpg|Configuring advance file and folder share settings]]
In this dialog, set the ''Share this folder'' to enable the sharing of the folder. Once this has been selected the ''Share name'' field and associated button will activate enabling a share name to be entered. By default the name of the folder being shared will be displayed, although this may be changed to another name if desired. If the number of concurrent users accessing a shared folder is of concern, modify the number of simultaneous users accordingly. Enter optional comments about the share before clicking on ''Caching'' to configure the ''off-line'' file settings. This will invoke the ''Offline Settings'' dialog where a number of options are available including allowing each user to specify which files they would like to be able to access off-line, only having files that user's actually access available off-line and disabling off-line sharing all together:
[[Image:windows_server_2008_offline_sharing_settings.jpg|Configuring Windows Server 2008 offline (cached) file sharing]]
The final step in the folder sharing setup is to click on ''Permissions'' to configure the ''share permissions'', details of which are covered in a later section of this chapter.
== Creating Shared Folders with Computer Management ==