Hi, are offline access settings per user or per machine? I've enabled offline folders on a laptop, and would like to move the "my documents" folder to the cached network share. I am just concerned that different users will run into problems when using the machine. Will they have the same cache? Exactly when and with which credentials will the laptop attempt to sync the files? This is a network without a server, just a simple NAS hosting the files. Thanks for your help!

Hi, Offline folder setting is per users. After you set it to be offline, the permission of the folder would not be changed. Therefore, please just ensure that only you have the permissions for the folder on the NAS.Arthur Xie - MSFT

Hi, If we would like to allow other users to access the shared files, we can set permission specifically so that they will not be changed by accident. Here is an example: On desktop: 1. Let's create a folder named Shared (any folder name is available). 2. Right click on the folder, choose Properties. 3. Go to Security tab, click Advanced. 4. On Permissions tab, click Change Permissions. 5. Uncheck the box "Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent", click Remove button when a dialog box occurs. This can help us remove all permission settings. 6. Click OK. We will get a warning as there is no group or user is set here. Click OK again. 7. Back to Security tab, click Edit --- Add. 8. Input Everyone in the box, click OK to add Everyone to "Group or user names" list. 9. Check "Read & execute", "List folder contents" and "Read" boxes. Uncheck any other boxes. 10. Redo step 7 and 8, input the user name on the laptop computer which we would like to give a full control permission. Note: I assume it named "Fields". 11. Check Full Control box under the specific user. This will allow it modify shared files. Note: If needed, we can also add a user on desktop (or the Administrators group) to the permission list, provide full control permission to it so that we can modify files on local. Back to the laptop computer, let's find the shared folder on network, right click on it, choose "Always Offline Available". Now the settings are finished. When we log on the user "Fields" on laptop computer, it can modify, add or delete shared files when the computer is offline. For other users, we can still access shared files offline but we cannot make any change.

OK thanks for the info. I am a bit confused regarding the order shares get accessed and mapped on e.g. logon, and how that affects offline access. Say, a) I create a share \\nas\someuser b) On the laptop, I map \\nas\someuser to U:\, and check to reassign on each logon c) I redirect "my documents" to u:\ (or \\nas\someuser) d) I set up offline access to \\nas\someuser What happens if I logon outside of the lan, or without wireless access? If I log on as another user? Must fast user switching be off for this to work?

Hi, Did you use the following method to move the My Document folder? I recommend that you try it. 1. Right-click on the folder My Document. 2. Click the Location tab.3. Set the location to an empty folder in the NAS. After setting the location, the folder on the NAS will be offline automatically. The file name on the NAS will be changed to My Document. If you would like to access it, just open your Library and open the Documents folder. You can also map to that folder in your system. We just need to maintain the access permission of the folder. After you move the folder, all users on that computer can see it in Sync Center. However, if you do not give them permissions to modify the folder, they can only access the folder in Sync Center but cannot sync them. In this case, if you log on without network connection, you can work with the local cached folder. If you log on with another user, you may not have permission to modify the folder unless this use has permissions to modify it.Arthur Xie - MSFT

Well this is not a very elegant solution.The documents folder that I want to point everything to is HUGE and i don't want to have to make it available offline. It's a waste of disk space and time since this is not a laptop.What's wrong with the way it was in XP? Just point to the network share and your done.This should be a no brainer since business's always point to a network share to facilitate backups on the server.Please say there's an easier way.

Does anyone have a solution to this other than making the my documents folder available offline?I don't want to tie up the space on the system partition and I don't need to replicate it as the server is always online and backed up.How is Microsoft thinking this isn't going to be a huge problem for windows deployments in business? Business always serve user data on a server and many set "my documents" to the network share.It opens all kinds of hardware and security risks having to replicate it to the local machine.Please provide guidance.

I think I found an answer for this. It is working for me:http://windows7forums.com/tweaks-guides-howtos/14475-howto-accessing-nas-locations-through-libraries.html

Note: jury rigging windows like mentioned in the post immediatly above works for my documents but you will start getting errors in many installations for some reason. It's something you can work around though. Just point the documents folder with your name back to the local drive and run the install. When the install is done point it back. It's stuff like this that makes me dislike microsoft. An IMPROVEMENT that breaks stuff.

It's not Microsoft's fault when an installer is written that does not understand a UNC path (\\server\whatever). Many times custom installers are coded and verify the path before proceeding, and if the verification code only expects C:\something\whatever, then it will fail on UNCs. If the software coder would actually test it with a UNC path, or just accept the path as Windows passes through its API, you wouldn't have that problem.

I really think this has to do with the libraries feature of windows 7 because ALL the installers fail. The root cause of the problem is not being able to map your my documents folder to a network share without it being indexed. I know where my stuff is, I don't need it indexed. It should be an option and not mandatory.