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the level of access you want to grant each user.You can use the drop-down list in the Permission Level column to choose from three levels of access:Reader: A reader can open files but can’t modify or create new files or folders.Contributor: A contributor can add files to the share but can change or delete only her own files.Owner: An owner has full access to the shared folder. He or she can create, change, or delete any file in the folder.

      7 Click Share.A confirmation dialog box appears to confirm that the folder has been shared.

Using the Public Folder

      Windows includes an alternative method of sharing files on the network: the Public folder. The Public folder is a folder that’s automatically designated for public access. Files you save in this folder can be accessed by other users on the network and by any user who logs on to your computer.

      Before you can use the Public folder, you must enable it. Just follow the steps listed in the section “Enabling File and Printer Sharing” earlier in this chapter, but choose the Turn on Sharing option in All Networks (Windows 10) or Public Sharing Settings (earlier versions of Windows).

      After you enable Public folder sharing, you can access the Public folder on your own computer in Windows 7 by choosing Start ⇒ Computer, expanding the Libraries item in the left pane, and then expanding the Documents, Music, Pictures, or Videos items. In Windows 8 and later, open the desktop, click the File Explorer icon on the taskbar, expand the Libraries item in the left pane, and then expand the Documents, Music, Pictures, or Videos items.

Figure 4-3 shows an example of a Public folder.

      As you can see, the Public folder includes several predefined subfolders designed for sharing documents, downloaded files, music, pictures, and videos. You can use these subfolders if you want, or you can create your own subfolders to help organize the data in your Public folder.

      FIGURE 4-3: The Public folder.

To access the Public folder of another computer, use the techniques that I describe in Chapter 3 to either browse to the Public folder or map it to a network drive.

Sharing a Printer

      Sharing a printer is much more traumatic than sharing a hard drive. When you share a hard drive, other network users access your files from time to time. When they do, you hear your drive click a few times, and your computer may hesitate for a half-second or so. The interruptions caused by other users accessing your drive are sometimes noticeable but rarely annoying.

      When you share a printer, you get to see Murphy’s Law in action: Your co-worker down the hall is liable to send a 140-page report to your printer just moments before you try to print a 1-page memo that has to be on the boss’s desk in two minutes. The printer may run out of paper — or worse, jam — during someone else’s print job — and you’re expected to attend to the problem.

      Although these interruptions can be annoying, sharing your printer makes a lot of sense in some situations. If you have the only decent printer in your office or workgroup, everyone will bug you to let them use it anyway. You may as well share the printer on the network. At least this way, they won’t line up at your door to ask you to print their documents for them.

To share a printer, follow these steps:

      1 Open the Control Panel.Windows 10, 8.1, and 8: Press the Windows key, type Control, and then click the Control Panel icon.Windows 7: Choose Start ⇒ Control Panel.

      2 Click Devices and Printers.

      3 Right-click the printer that you want to share and choose Printer Properties.The Properties dialog box for the printer appears.

      4 Click the Sharing tab.The Sharing tab appears, as shown in Figure 4-4. Notice that the options for sharing the printer are disabled.

      5 Select the Share This Printer option.

      6 (Optional) Change the share name if you don’t like the name suggested by Windows.Because other computers will use the share name to identify the shared printer, pick a descriptive name.

      7 Click OK.You return to the Printers folder. The icon for the printer is modified to indicate that it has been shared.

      FIGURE 4-4: Sharing a printer.

To take your shared printer off the network so that other network users can’t access it, follow Steps 1–4 in the preceding set of steps. Deselect the Share This Printer check box and then click OK.

Using Microsoft Office on a Network

      Microsoft Office is far and away the most popular suite of application programs used on personal computers, and it includes the most common types of application programs used in an office: a word processing program (Word), a spreadsheet program (Excel), a presentation program (PowerPoint), and an excellent email program (Outlook). Depending on the version of Office you purchase, you may also get a database program (Access), a desktop publishing program (Publisher), a set of Ginsu knives (KnifePoint), and a slicer and dicer (ActiveSalsa).

      

To get the most from using Office on a network, you should download the Office Deployment Kit. This tool allows you to create simple click-to-run installers for Office applications. You can easily find it by searching for Office Deployment Kit in your favorite search engine.

      Accessing network files

Opening a file that resides on a network drive is almost as easy as opening a file on a local drive. All Office programs use File ⇒ Open to summon the Open dialog box, as shown in its Excel incarnation in Figure 4-5. (The Open dialog box is nearly identical in other Office programs.)

      FIGURE 4-5: The Open dialog box in Excel.

To access a file that resides on a network volume that’s mapped to a drive letter, all you have to do is use the drop-down list at the top of the dialog box to select the network drive.

      You can map a network drive directly from the Open dialog box by navigating to the folder you want to map, right-clicking the folder, and choosing Map Network Drive.

      

If you try to open a file that another network user has opened already, Office tells you that the file is already in use and offers to let you open a read-only version of the file. You can read and edit the read-only version, but Office doesn’t let you overwrite the existing version of the file. Instead, you have to use the Save As command to save your changes to a new file.

      Using workgroup templates

      Although

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