sharing files and "mounting volumes"

[chasm24]

Hey everybody, hope you're all having a nice friday.

i'm trying to share a bunch of files (references) with remote users in my office. i understand that they all have to be "talking" to the host computer but am not so clear on the different "volumes" that they need to mount. I set up a username and password for everyone to use to access the host computer but then that gives each person a separate volume when really all I want is for them to access one folder on the host hard drive that holds all the documents associated with the database.

Is there a simpler way to pull this off? or do you know a place that explains the process of mounting different volumes?

i appreciate your help.

[Wim Decorte]

what files are we talking about here? If they are FileMaker files, then you're setting yourself up for a world of hurt. Never ever use OS level file sharing to share FM files.

Open the files in a copy of FileMaker (or better: FileMaker Server) and let the others connect to those files through "open remote". And turn off OS file sharing on the files, their folder or any parent folder.

FileMaker uses its own "sharing" mechanism and the OS one will conflict with it (and corrupt your files in the long run)

[chasm24]

thanks for the response Wim,

I actually talking about Word and powerpoint files that i'm storing as file references in container fields. For example, the database holds information about projects and i attach a wod document file reference in one of the records and want my remote users to be able to access that file on the host's hard drive.

does this make it clearer?

[Wim Decorte]

the path to the reference needs to be the same on all clients as from the machine you made the reference from. To avoid having to map drive letters on Windows, make references to the UNC path of the files: serverNameshareNamefileName.

Not sure on Mac if you can do the same without mounting a volume...