How to Share a File and Map a Drive in Windows 7

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One of the most common experiences when working on a network, especially among co-workers, is that someone may have a set of files or folders that can be used by many people. In such a situation it is worth having a shared folder and mapping the folder to a network drive for everyone to use. Here are the steps to accomplish that.

Part 1 Share the Folder

Click the start icon at the lower left hand side.

• Click on Computer and one will see the drives on the computer.

• Select the Local Disk (C:)
• The folders will now appear.

• For example purposes, select downloads.
• Right Click on the folder that you want to share.

You can now pick specific people to share.

Why is there the “nobody” option? To prevent the folder from being shared at all.

• You can select the administrator, or specific people, or everyone. In previous versions of share, the share occurred only at the everyone level.
• You can specify different editing values: read only, read and write – a modify option, or remove, to remove the share from someone or everyone.

• This folder is now shared. You also have the option of sending an e-mail with the links to the shared program, or paste the links into another program.

Part 2

Now that the folder is shared, you can map the drive to any other computer on the network for others to have access to it.

• Go to Start on the lower left hand side of the screen.
• Select Computer

Select Network Drive

Click Browse and you will see the Network Computers become available.
In this case the downloads folder was shared from the ML1 computer.
Or if the network computer name is known, one can type \\ML1\downloads since that is the computer name and the shared folder name.

select downloads

The result is:

Click Finish
Now the local shared folder is mapped out to the network.
Drive letter Z is assigned to it, but from the drop down, you can  choose any other letter that is available.

To view the mapped drive

select start

select computer

Select Computer and you will see the following:

One can now use this share as any other drive. And anyone else can use it as well.

Starting with a folder that one would like to make available to others, to map it involves two steps:

1. share the folder
2. map the folder to the network.

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