Assessing Computers on a Network: Sharing ONE folder ONLY?

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Hello Apple Geniuses,

I can successfully connect/share my 3 computers that is connected on the same Wi-Fi home network. To be specific, I have one Mac and two Windows computers connected and sharing folders on the same network.

I can access my Mac from Windows and vice versa. However, there is one characteristic I do not like when I share from my Mac. In other words, view my Mac folders FROM a WINDOWS PC. My Mac shares more folders than I want it to. Sure, I can share a single Mac folder from desktop to my Windows computer but I cannot restrict all the OTHER folders (movies, pictures, documents, music) that is inevitably shared with Windows, as it seems.

When I access Windows from my Mac, I can only access ONE folder from Windows. I typically create that single Windows folder on desktop known as 'My Sharing Folder'. That's how I want my Mac to be. Limited to the files or folders that I manually elect to share.

Thanks in advance
 
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Here's the deal.

If you connect to your Windows computer by IP as a local administrator using the CMD + K option in the Finder you will only see the one share. If you specify another location such as:

SMB://windows.pc.ip.address/C$ eg SMB://192.168.1.10/C$

You will see the whole C: drive.

Just like connecting to a Mac as an admin user you'll see Macintosh HD.

The assumption is that if you are connecting to a remote computer as a specified user, it gives you access to everything that user would have access to.

You can create a "Sharing" only account on the Mac which would then allow you to specify a folder to which to allow the account to have access. Perhaps in the /Users/Shared folder.
 
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Is there a step-by-step guide anywhere on the web that shows this?
I have tried but I hit a brick wall
 
C

chas_m

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You already have a single shared folder available on your Mac RIGHT NOW. It's the only folder available when a PC connects to your Mac unless you change things. It's called "Public" and it is located in each User account. To make it available on the network, just turn on File Sharing.
 
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Whether I have a single sharing folder or not, my Mac seems to share that and all the videos, music, documents and videos folder too.
 
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Never mind. I have downloaded Dropbox to share files between Windows and Mac at home. I guess that method asked prior is ancient history. The process is complex and troublesome.

Does anyone know if DropBox will work anywhere in the world?
For example, if I was to take this laptop to another country, can I share files with my brother back at home? I'm thinking the answer should be 'yes'.
 

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