To access the shared folders available on your network, click on My Network Places, icon that is located on Windows desktop. Just double click the shared folder you want to access and that’s all you’ll need to do.

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Figure 7: Listing shared folders available on your network.

If a folder that you know that is shared is not being listed on My Network Places – a rather common problem –, hit the F5 key on your keyboard. This is a shortcut to the “refresh” function.

If the shared folder you want to access is still not listed, click on “Add a network place” (first item on the left column), then on the window that will show up, click on Next, Choose another network location, Next. On the next screen, you can explore your network by clicking on Browse. This will allow you to locate the computer and the shared folder you want to access. Sometimes, however, Windows won’t list the computer or the shared folder. If this is your case, you can manually add the shared folder you want to access by entering its location on “Internet or network address” box, using the \computer_name\shared_folder_name format. In our case, for example, we would add \Gabriel\Shared_Data, as Gabriel being the computer name where the shared folder is located and Shared_Data being the name we gave for the shared folder (see previous page). Just keep clicking on Next to finish this wizard.

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Figure 8: Forcing Windows to access your shared folder.

All shared folders available on your network are available also from within any Open/Save/Save As dialog box, thru My Network Places icon. So you can open a file stored in a shared folder within your favorite program.