Anybody that has both a Mac and a PC will understand that it’s sometimes very convenient to setup shared folders that can be accessed from either machine, to save copying files to external media such as USB drives. There are several ways to share folders, and the process is actually quite simple. However, it’s not necessarily very obvious, but with just a few minutes of setup you’ll be able to share files and folders easily between machines. This functionality is particularly useful if you frequently work on a PC and need to copy files occasionally to the Mac in order to backup automatically using Time Machine. This tutorial some of the basic ways to setup sharing between your Mac and a PC.

How To Share Your Mac’s Folders With a PC One option is to share one or more folders on your Mac with your PC. The steps you need to follow are detailed below. Create a New Sharing-Only User Account The first thing to do is to create a new user account on your Mac that will be used for sharing only (i.e you won’t be able to login with it). This is the account that your PC will use when it connects to the Mac. Open System Preferences and select the User & Groups icon in the System section Setup a new sharing user account 2.

In the left-hand panel you’ll see all the current users already setup on your Mac, including the current user account that you’re logged in with. It’s usually best to create a new sharing-only user for your PC to access the Mac. Just click the + sign which is located just below the Login Options button Add a new sharing-only user 3. A new drop-down window appears with various fields that you need to complete. In the New Account field, select the drop-down menu and choose Sharing Only Add the user and choose Sharing Only 4.

Finder has a built-in way for finding large files with Spotlight search. Click the drive you want to search, open the search window, and hit the + button next to the “Save” button at the top right.

Next, enter the full name, account name and password for the new account and select Create User. Bear in mind that it’s advisable to use the same account name as the Windows logon account that is already setup on the PC. For example, suppose you normally login to Windows as pc-admin, then the new account name on the Mac should also be called pc-admin. This just means that you don’t need to enter the login details every time the PC connects to the Mac because the PC user account and the Mac sharing account details will match Enter the user details and create the account 5. Once you’ve entered the relevant details, the new sharing-only account will be active and appear in the Other Users section in Users & Groups as below.

In this case, my sharing-only account for the PC is just called roland placeholder Configure Sharing Preferences 1. The next stage is to enable and configure sharing on the Mac, which is normally turned off by default. Open System Preferences and then the Sharing icon from the Internet & Wireless section Open the sharing options in System Preferences 2. In the left-hand panel you’ll see a list of available options. Tick the checkbox labelled File Sharing 3. Next, turn on SMB sharing which lets Windows (rather than just other Macs) access your computer. Click Options and make sure the item Share files and folders using SMB (Windows) is ticked.

In the main window you’ll see a list of users, so just add the new sharing-only user account that you created in previous steps. You’ll be prompted to enter the password for the user – this will be the same as the Windows password you use, and that you entered earlier. Next, hit OK to continue Choose sharing options and enable SMB (Windows) sharing 4. Insert pdf link into powerpoint 2011 for mac. Back in the Sharing window, you’ll see a list of shared folders.

Click Add (the + button) to open a drop-down window where you can select the folders you want to share. By default, normally only your public folder is shared with read-only permissions. In the drop-down window that appears, navigate to the folder you want to share – in this case we’ll choose the main Documents folder on the Mac, and click Add Choose which folders you want to share 5. The Sharing window should now look like shown below. File sharing will be enabled, the shared folders will be displayed as a list, and a small green status icon indicates whether it’s been turned on successful. In the example below, the new user (“roland”) doesn’t have any file permissions set (the user names Roland visible below is my main Mac account, not the new sharing-only user).

The shared folders have now been selected 6. Next, you need to assign the new sharing-only user with the appropriate file permissions in order to be able to read and write to the shared folder. Click the + button on the lower right of the Sharing window to bring up the list of users and groups. Find the new sharing-only user, highlight them, and hit Select Select which users can view this folder 7. To assign the correct file permissions for the shared folder, click on the drop-down permissions icon as shown below, and change the default value to Read & Write Set the sharing permissions on the selected folder 8.