Creating New Groups

To create a group, you must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group. The Administrators group has full permissions to manage users and groups.

As you do in your choices for usernames, keep your naming conventions in mind when assigning names to groups. When you create a local group, consider the following guidelines:

• The group name should be descriptive (for example, Accounting Data Users).
• The group name must be unique to the computer, different from all other group names and usernames that exist on that computer.
• Group names can be up to 256 characters. It is best to use alphanumeric characters for ease of administration. Most special characters- for example, backslash (\)- are not allowed.

Creating groups is similar to creating users, and it is a fairly easy process. After you've added the Local Users and Groups MMC or use the Local Users and Groups through Computer Management, expand it to see the Users and Groups folders. Right-click the Groups folder and select New Group from the context menu. This brings up the New Group dialog box.

The only required entry in the New Group dialog box is the group name. If appropriate, you can enter a description for the group, and you can add (or remove) group members. When you're ready to create the new group, click the Create button.

Perform the following steps to create two new local groups:

1. Open the Admin Console MMC Desktop shortcut you created and expand the Local Users and Groups snap-in.
2. Right-click the Groups folder and select New Group.
3. In the New Group dialog box, type Data Users in the Group Name text box. Click the Create button.
4. In the New Group dialog box, type Application Users in the Group Name text box. Click the Create button.

After the groups are created, you have to manage the groups and its membership. In the next section we look at managing groups.