January 2000

Sharing Presentations on Your Hard Drive with Other Users

by Tracy Aardsma

You can easily share access to presentations stored on your hard drive with other users in your workgroup by storing them in a shared folder. When you share access to your presentations, your colleagues can view and edit them independently, leaving you free to do other things. Independent presentation viewing works great for highly detailed or narrated presentations that don't require a facilitator, as well as presentations that might be used by other facilitators in your company. In this article, we'll show you how to share access to PowerPoint presentations on your hard drive by creating a shared folder using Windows 95. This technique also works with Windows 98 systems.

The technique

To configure shared access to presentations and other files, first designate a folder to store them in, then move or copy them to that folder. Once your presentations are in place, you need to access your system's network properties and enable folder sharing on your computer. When folder sharing is activated, you can proceed to modify the designated folder's share-level access controls. You can configure your shared folder to grant users read-only access, which permits them to view and copy shared files, or full access, which permits them to edit shared files as well.

Both types of access require you to set an access password. This way, only those users who know the shared folder's password will be able to access it. For our example, we'll configure both read-only and full access to our shared folder by assigning a unique password for each access level.

Creating the folder

For our example, we'll create a new folder that will contain only those presentation files we wish to share with other users. To create a new folder, open My Computer and navigate to the directory in which you'd like to store the shared folder. Select File/New/Folder from the menu bar, and then type a name for the folder and press [Enter]. We named our folder Sample Presentations. Next, save, move, or copy the presentation(s) you want to share to the new folder.

Enabling folder sharing

Now that you've created a new folder and your presentation files are in place, you're ready to enable folder sharing on your system. Select Settings/Control Panel from the Windows Start menu. Then, double-click on the Network icon to access your computer's network properties. Click on the Configuration tab (if it isn't already active), and then click File And Print Sharing. In the File And Print Sharing dialog box, select the I Want To Be Able To Give Others Access To My Files check box, as shown in Figure A, then click OK. Click OK to close the Network dialog box.

Figure A: You can allow other users access to your files in the File And Print Sharing dialog box.
[ Figure A ]

When you do, Windows displays a progress indicator while it builds a driver information database for your system. When the progress indicator closes, Windows next informs you that since you've made system settings changes, you'll need to restart your computer before those changes take effect. If you have any open, unsaved documents, click No; save your work and close any open applications, then proceed to restart your system. Otherwise, simply click Yes to restart your system.

Configuring sharing properties

When your system has finished rebooting, folder sharing is enabled and you can set the sharing properties for the new folder. Open My Computer and navigate to the directory in which you've stored the folder you want to share. Right-click on the folder and then click Sharing on the resulting shortcut menu, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B: When you change your system properties to enable file sharing, the Sharing command appears on the folder's shortcut menu.
[ Figure B ]

Assigning a share name

On the Sharing property sheet, select the Shared As option to enable the folder's share properties. Windows assigns the folder a share name based on its folder name. However, Windows limits the share name to 12 characters, so you may wish to change it. To do so, simply type a new name in the Share Name text box. In the Comment text box, you can add a comment that describes the folder's purpose or contents if desired. We changed our sample folder's share name to Slide Shows and entered the comment Sample PowerPoint presentations.

Setting share-level access control

In the Sharing property sheet's Access Type panel, you can allow users read-only access to the shared folder, full access, or both, depending on the password they use. The Read-Only option enables users to open and copy documents located in the shared folder. To allow users to modify the files in the shared folder, select the Full option. Or, by choosing the Depends On Password option, you can assign a password that enables read-only access and another that allows full access.

Select the Depends On Password option, then type a unique password in the Read-Only Password text box. Next, enter a different password in the Full Access Password text box. Be sure to make a mental note of the passwords you entered; when you finish setting up your shared folder, you can disseminate the access passwords to other users accordingly. At this point, the Sharing property sheet should resemble the one shown in Figure C. When you've finished, click Apply.

Figure C: You can configure both read-only and full access to a shared folder by associating a different password with each share-level access control.
[ Figure C ]

When you click Apply, Windows asks you to confirm the passwords you assigned to the shared folder's share-level access controls. Type the passwords you just assigned in the appropriate text boxes, and then click OK. Click OK once more to close the shared folder's properties dialog box.

Connecting to the shared folder

When you configure shared access to your hard drive's files and folders, Windows adds your computer name to the Network Neighborhood directory. You can determine which network resources are available to you by double-clicking on your Network Neighborhood desktop icon. We stored our shared Slide Shows folder on our example system, Narnia, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D: You can access shared files and folders in the Network Neighborhood directory.
[ Figure D ]

Tip: If you don't know your computer name or would like to assign a new one, select Settings/Control Panel from the Windows Start menu, then double-click on the Network icon. In the Network dialog box, click on the Identification tab. Your computer name appears in the Computer Name text box. If you decide to change your computer name, be aware that you'll need to restart your system for the new setting to take effect.

To access the shared folder from another system, double-click on the Network Neighborhood desktop icon. Next, double-click on the shared system icon. For our example, this is the Narnia icon. When the shared resource opens, you'll see the shared folders and files that you can access on the host system. As shown in Figure D, we have access to the Slide Shows folder on the Narnia system.

To access a shared folder's contents, double-click on the folder icon. When you do, Windows prompts you to enter your password. Since we configured our shared folder to allow both read-only and full access to users based on the password they enter, whichever password you enter here will determine the access you end up with.

Troubleshooting

If you're having trouble accessing a shared folder, make sure that the host system is connected to the network you're trying to access. If the host system is shut down or otherwise disconnected from the network, you won't be able to access its shared resources. If the host system is connected but your password doesn't grant access to its shared resources, check whether the administrator of the host system has also restricted access to the host system itself. If this is the case, you'll need to know the password required to access that host system.


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