Windows 7 / Getting Started

---

Offline Folders

Because many users use portable computers many users have a need to access files in a shared folder while not being connected to the network where the shared folder is. To overcome this problem, you can use offline files.

To configure Offline Files, click Open the Sync Center and then click Manage offline files. From the General tab in the Offline Files dialog box, you can enable or disable offline files by clicking the top button. You can also use the General tab to open Sync Center and to view your offline files.

The Disk Usage tab enables you to see how much disk space is currently being used by offline files and enables you to change the limits of storage that offline uses. The Encryption tab enables you to encrypt or decrypt your offline files.

The Network tab enables you to choose to automatically work on any locally cached offline files when your connection to the network is slow. You can also choose how often to check for a slow network connection.

In addition, you can encrypt your offline files to help secure private information using the Sync Manager. Of course, when you encrypt offline files, only your user account can access the cached data.

After a folder is shared, you can control if a folder is available as an offline folder and how remote users access files inside each of your shares. The Caching settings for shared folders are configured by clicking the Advanced Sharing, on the Sharing tab of the folder's property sheet and clicking the Caching button to generate the resulting window. The options are as follows:

• Only the files and programs that users specify will be available offline: This setting is the default and enables any files or programs in the share to be available offline to users but users must make the decision.
• No files or programs from the shared folder are available offline: This setting disables caching from the share.
• All files and programs that users open from the share will be automatically available offline: This setting ensures that any files a user accesses from this share while online are available offline.
• Optimized for performance: This checkbox enables the caching to take place in the background, therefore helping to optimize network performance.

To make files or folders available offline, do the following:

1. While connected to the network, locate the network file or folder that you want to make available offline.
2. Right-click the file or folder and then click Always available offline.

Windows automatically creates a copy of that file or folder on your computer. Anytime you reconnect to that network folder, Windows syncs the files between your computer and the network folder. You can also sync them manually at any time.

If you work with offline files in different folders, you might want to view all of them without opening each folder individually. To enable this functionality, do the following:

1. Open the Sync Center.
2. Click the Manage offline files option.
3. On the General tab, click View your offline files.

If you want to sync your offline files right away to be sure you have the latest versions of files stored on the network, do the following:

1. Click to open Sync Center.
2. Click the Offline Files folder. Then, on the toolbar, click Sync to sync all your offline files.

If you want to sync only one file or folder, or a selection of files, you don't need to open Sync Center. Simply right-click the item, point to Sync, and then click Sync selected offline files.