How to Create a Shared Network Folder and Connect to it in Windows 11

Networking with Microsoft Windows has been a popular way to share files and folders at the office and even at home since the early days of Windows itself. When you share a folder on your computer, you can grant other users on the network access to your files and folders so they can do things such as work on them or even add their own files to your shared folder.

When Windows 11 came out, Microsoft improved the security features which can make it a bit more difficult to set up basic peer to peer sharing using Windows 11. In this article, we will be showing you how to create a shared network folder and connect to it in Windows 11. Knowing how to share folders in Windows 11 is an essential skill for effective Windows file and folder management.

Configuring Share Permissions

In order to share folders on your network with other users, you will need to configure your share permissions for the folder you want to share on the network.

To do so, you can right click the folder you wish to share and select Properties. From there you will want to go to the Sharing tab.

In Windows 11, there are two ways to configure your shared folder. You can use the simple share method or the advanced sharing method. To use the simple share method, you can click on the Share button under Network File and Folder Sharing.

From here, you can add a user account from the computer sharing the folder and assign that user read access or read and write access. You do not have any options for full control etc. using this method.

If you were to click the Advanced Sharing button, you will see that you have additional sharing options such as being able to change the share name which will not affect the name of the folder but only the name of the share itself. You can also change the default value of 20 for the simultaneous users to something higher or lower and add comments to the share if needed.

Clicking on the Permissions button will allow you to view who has access to this shared folder over the network. In most cases, you will find that the Everyone group has read access by default but you can change or remove this account if desired.

To add another user or group, you can click the Add button and type in the name of a user account on the computer that is hosting the shared folder. You can click the Check Names button to make sure you have typed it correctly. You can also click the Advanced button to do a search for the user account you want to add.

Once you have added the user account to the shared folder, you can then decide if you want to grant them read, change or full control access. These permissions can be fine tune with the NTFS permissions discussed in the next section. If you use the deny permission that will take precedence over any other type of access, so be careful when using this.

Checking and Changing NTFS Permissions

Since share permissions only grant user access to a shared folder, you will also need to review your NTFS permissions to make sure that you have properly configured access to your shared folder. Windows uses a combination of share and NTFS permissions to determine the final access to a shared folder. You can find out more about NFTS permissions here.

To view the NTFS permissions for a folder, you can once again right click on a folder and select Properties. This time you will click on the Security tab to view the permissions for any user account that has access to this folder, whether it’s over the network or locally.

If the check marks are greyed out for your user accounts, that means that the folder is inheriting permissions from its parent folder and you will need to change the permission level at the parent or disable inheritance for that folder.

When you click the Edit button, you will see that the permission checkboxes are greyed out as well.

To disable inheritance, you will need to click the Advanced button from the first screen of the Security tab and then click the Disable inheritance button.

When you do this, you will be prompted to choose between Convert inherited permissions into explicit permissions on the object or Remove all inherited permissions from this object.

Here is what each one of these options will do.

Convert inherited permissions into explicit permissions on the object

• This keeps all the existing inherited permissions but makes them explicit (directly assigned to the folder).
• The folder will no longer inherit permissions from its parent, but the current permissions remain unchanged.
• Useful if you want to stop inheritance but keep the same access settings.

Remove all inherited permissions from this object

• This removes all inherited permissions, leaving only explicitly assigned permissions (if any exist).
• If no explicit permissions are set, the folder may become inaccessible until new permissions are manually assigned.
• Useful if you want a clean slate and set permissions from scratch.

For the most part, you will want to use the Convert inherited permissions into explicit permissions on the object option.

Configuring the Windows Settings and Firewall for Shared Folder Access

By default, your computer should be configured to use the Public Network type rather than the Private Network type. This is because the Public Network type offers stronger security and limited device discovery so people on shared networks cannot gain access to your computer.

Microsoft recommends setting your network type to Private to make things easier to access. This can be done by going to the Windows settings and then to the Network & internet options and choosing the Private network profile for your connection.

You can then go back to the main Network & internet section and then click on Advanced network settings.

Within this section, you should see an option for Advanced sharing settings that you can then select.

Here you will be able to see the sharing settings for the Private network and then you can make sure Network discovery and File and printer sharing are enabled.

One other place you should check the settings for is the Windows firewall under the Allow apps to communicate through Windows Defender Firewall. Then make sure that File and Printer Sharing is enabled for the Private network. If it’s not, you will need to click on the Change settings button to make the checkboxes active so you can click on them.

Accessing your Shared Folder Over the Network

Once you have your shared folder configured correctly, you can then try to access this folder over the network from a different computer.

To do so, you can open File Explorer and type in the name or IP address of the remote computer to see what folders and even printers are being shared. In our example, we will type in the name of the remote computer after typing in \\ at the beginning of the name so it will look like \\win11-home. The \\ at the beginning of a share name is part of the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) used in Windows to specify network resources. It tells Windows that you’re referring to a network location rather than a local file path.

When we try to connect to this shared folder, we are then prompted to enter the name and password for a user account on the computer that is sharing the folder. If you are using a Microsoft account, you will need to type it in the following format.

MicrosoftAccount\MSaccountEmailAddress

You will then need to type in the password associated with the Microsoft account email address. You can also check the box that says Remember my credentials, so you do not need to type in the password again next time you access the share.

As you can see in the image below, we can see the shared folder from the previous step as well as a shared printer that happens to be configured on the computer.

We can then open the Confidential Files folder to see its contents. Since our user account has full control, we can do things such as edit files, create folders and delete files and folders as needed.

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