▷ How to share windows 10 folder

In addition, we will see how to connect different versions of Windows, using a Windows 7 for this. We will do this because the way of sharing folders in a traditional way has changed in Windows 10, eliminating the "home group" that had existed until now. Since the April 2018 update this group has been removed and the ability to share folders between Windows 10 computers has been simplified. We will see both options.

Traditional Windows 10 folder sharing

In this way we will ensure that our network settings are compatible and valid for all the computers that we have regardless of the versions of Windows installed.

For this reason we will base ourselves on the traditional concept of a working group. For the demonstration we are going to use three computers: Our physical computer with Windows 10 Pro installed, and two virtual machines. One of them will be another Windows 10 and the other a Windows 7 Ultimate.

Connect computers to network: network settings

Well the first thing we will have to do is make sure that there is communication between the different teams. Although we use virtual machines, we have made sure to configure the network access of each one of them to be physically to the router, in this way we simulate a real internal network.

The first thing we must do is check the network configuration that our computers have. Since we are in a domestic internal network, the ideal will be to configure this as "Private network"

To see what type of network we have in Windows 10 we will go to Start and write "control panel". Next, we will access the icon of "Network and Sharing Center"

In this way, a window will appear with information regarding our network. It will have to be in the following way:

Normally they are in this way, except in laptops that use Wifi to connect to external sites to our home network. In this case it is surely as a public network, so from a laptop we will be able to see the shared resources of other computers, but we will not be able to see the laptop on the network if we are located on another computer.

To change a public network to private in Windows 10 we will do the following:

We go to the equipment configuration by clicking on the cogwheel located in the start menu.

Now we access "Network and Internet" and within this we locate our connection. This will have the name of "Ethernet" if it is a physical connection or "Wifi" if it is average Wifi

Now click on the icon with the same name on the right side and from there we can change the configuration of our network type to "Public" or "Private"

In Windows 7 we can do it from the same section of the control panel by clicking on the network icon

Networking computers: sharing settings

The next thing will be to check what permissions we have regarding the advanced sharing settings. This will be done in the same way in Windows 10 and Windows 7, for this we will do the following:

As before we went to Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center. This time we click on "Change advanced sharing settings"

We will have three sections, Private, Guest or Public and All networks. In the first section we must have the options enabled to allow sharing and network detection.

In the second section, if we have laptops with a public network or we simply want it, we can also activate these options. We must bear in mind that when we go outside, it is advisable to deactivate these options.

In the third section we will leave it as it is. Although if we have computers that your local user does not have a password, we will deactivate the "Activate sharing with password protection" option. Since, even without a password, the team will ask for it, throwing a connection error.

Networking computers - workgroup setup

If we have different versions of Windows in our network we will have to configure your workgroup so that they belong to it. This way they can establish the connection. Also, it is recommended that they have a team name. Let's see how to do this.

It will be done in the same way in both Windows 7 and Windows 10.

We go to the file explorer and right click on "This team" or "Team" and choose the option "Properties"

In the access window we go to the "name configuration,…" section. Here we click on "Change settings".

Within the new window we choose the option "Change…". In this way we can put a name to the team and another to the work group. We will do this in the three teams, thus having three computers in the “CASA” group and each one with a name.

After modifying these parameters it will be necessary to restart the equipment.

Buy that connection exists and know IP address

Now we must verify that there is a connection between them. For this, the first thing we must do is know what the IP address of each computer is. This will be useful later to connect to each computer on the network.

We go to start and write "cmd" and open our command console on all computers. To know each IP we will write the following command:

Ipconfig

We look at the section "IPv4 Address" this will be the IP that interests us. For our case we will have:

Windows 7 IP: 192.168.2.106 Virtual Windows 10: 192.168.2.105 Physical Windows IP: 192.168.2.102

Now let's check that there is a connection. In the same command window we write

Ping

For example, we want to see from Windows 7 if we can see virtual Windows 10, then it would be: ping 192.168.2.105

If there is a connection, it will show us the response of the other node and the time it takes to respond

Share and access Windows 10 folder

We already have everything ready, so it's time to share Windows 10 folder so that other computers can see them. This procedure will be carried out identically with all the equipment.

The first thing will be to create or choose the folder we want to share. Once located, right-click on it and choose "Properties" Now we go to the "Share" tab

Within this we click on "Advanced Sharing"

Click on "Share this folder" Next, we must assign its permissions for users who want to access it. We can decide to read your content, change it or have full control.

Now all we have to do is go to another team and connect to the team that has its shared folder. We will do the following:

In the file explorer, we go to the "Network" section of the directory tree on the left.

We see that only the Windows 7 computer appears on the visible network. In this case, to access another computer, we will go to the address bar of the browser and write:

In this way, we will be able to access the shared resources through your IP address.

When we click to search, an authentication window should appear where we will have to enter the username of the server computer and its password. We introduce the parameters and we will access the shared folder

If said user does not have a password and the option that we previously mentioned about the advanced network configuration of is active, it will throw us an error.

In this case, we either disable the option in the control panel or add a password to the user of this computer.

In any case, we can already access the shared resource of each team. This procedure will be identical in each team.

If the computer on the network does not appear to us, we can choose its address and choose the option " Pin to quick access". So we will have it whenever we want available. With this method we can share Windows 10 folder to any computer with any version of Windows.

Share Windows 10 folder quickly

The previous option is fine if we want to use a generic method for any team. but sharing Windows 10 folder is much easier than doing all this. We will not even have the need to belong to the same workgroup since Windows automatically detects computers that are visible and have shared resources on the network.

We are going to share a folder from our Windows 10 Physical using this method:

We go to the folder in question and right-click on it. We choose the option "Grant access to…"

In the new window we can add a specific user so that they can access this folder (for this we will have to create it on the computer where we share the folder ”) or directly choose “ All ” the users who want to access it. We also choose the permissions we want them to have.