Prohibiting a Network Folder from Being Made Available Offline
You may occasionally come
across a network folder or file that you don’t want some users on your
network to make available offline:
You might
want to prohibit people from making a recorded TV folder available
offline because the synchronization would take too long and use up too
many network resources.
You
might have a network folder or file that contains private or sensitive
data, and you don’t want that data leaving the office.
You
might want to do extensive work on the files in a particular folder,
and so you don’t want other making changes to those files while offline.
For these and
similar reasons, Windows 7 enables you to prohibit a user from making a
particular network folder available offline. This means that when the
user navigates to the network folder or file, Windows 7 doesn’t display
the Always Available Offline command, so the user can’t make the object
available offline.
Here are the steps to follow:
1. | Log
on to the computer of the user for whom you want to set up the
restriction. Ideally, you should log on with an Administrator-level
account.
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2. | Select Start, type gpedit.msc and press Enter. The Local Group Policy Object Editor appears.
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3. | Select User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Network, Offline Files.
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4. | Double-click the Prohibit ‘Make Available Offline’ for These Files and Folders option.
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5. | Click the Enabled option.
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6. | Click Show to open the Show Contents dialog box.
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7. | In the Value Name column, type the network address of the folder or file you want to prohibit (see Figure 5).
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8. | Press Enter.
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9. | Repeat steps 7 and 8 to add any other files or folders that you want to prohibit.
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10. | Click OK to return to the Prohibit ‘Make Available Offline’ for These Files and Folders dialog box.
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11. | Click OK.
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Encrypting Offline Files
In
the previous section, I mentioned that one of the reasons you might
want to prohibit a file or folder from being made available offline is
that it may contain private or sensitive data that you don’t want
leaving your home or office. That’s sensible because a thief could
easily steal your notebook and might be able to access the sensitive
data. However, it’s a problem if you really need to work with that data
while you’re offline.
To work around this
problem, you can encrypt your offline files, which scrambles the file
contents so that no snoop can read them unless he can log on to your
computer using your Windows 7 account. Because that’s unlikely (I’m
assuming here that your account is protected by a strong password, which
it should be if you’re working with sensitive data), your data is safe.
Caution
Of course, when you’re
logged in to Windows 7, you should never leave your notebook unattended.
Not only does this make it easy for someone to make off with your
computer, it also defeats the purpose of encryption because the thief
will already be logged on.
Follow these steps to encrypt your offline files:
1. | Select Start, type offline, and then select Manage Offline Files in the search results. Windows 7 opens the Offline Files dialog box.
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2. | Display the Encryption tab.
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3. | Click Encrypt. Windows 7 encrypts the offline files.
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4. | Click OK.
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Note
After Windows 7
encrypts the offline files, it displays the Encrypting File System icon
in the taskbar. You should back up your encryption key to a removable
media, such as a USB thumb drive, external hard drive, or memory card,
as soon as possible. To do this, click the Back Up Your File Encryption
Key message to open the Encrypting File System dialog box, and then
click Back Up Now to launch the Certificate Export Wizard.
