Shared folder / files question

[Guv10]

Hi,

This is probably really simple and i'm being thick

I want to have a shared folder with several documents in that I can access from both my laptop and my desktop. I dont want to use google sheets or office 365. They are excel spreadsheets and I have office 16 which i'm happy with.

Whats the best way of doing it?

Thanks

[randlemarcus]

Is there a reason you don't want to use services set up specifically to make things like this trivially easy? OneDrive jumps out as the easiest way in the world ever to do this, and not have to faff around with NAS's and stuff.

[Guv10]

randlemarcus said:

Is there a reason you don't want to use services set up specifically to make things like this trivially easy? OneDrive jumps out as the easiest way in the world ever to do this, and not have to faff around with NAS's and stuff.

I'm not keen on google sheet, prefer excel and the same with office 365. I prefer using the stand alone version.

[sjg]

Loads of cloud storage things available these days with a free tier that's fine for a few docs. Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Drive, Apple iCloud Drive, Sugarsync, Box, etc.

[Guv10]

sjg said:

Loads of cloud storage things available these days with a free tier that's fine for a few docs. Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Drive, Apple iCloud Drive, Sugarsync, Box, etc.

I guess google drive would be the easiest for me as I've got a google account. Can you have a link to the folder on the desktop?

[sjg]

Easiest is to use their sync client, it just keeps everything up to date between the machine you're using and the cloud.

https://www.google.com/drive/download/

[sbarclay62]

sjg said:

Easiest is to use their sync client, it just keeps everything up to date between the machine you're using and the cloud.

https://www.google.com/drive/download/

Go with this. Then when you open the document via this it will open with your default application, ie will use Excel and note Google Sheets for .xlsx documents etc.

[Mr Pointy]

Just watch out for file locking - with some cloud services you can get into the situation where you have the file open on both laptop & PC & end up with sync issues.

[Freakuk]

I think you're getting a little confused here.

You want something to be able to sync/share but you're assuming that if you used Google you have to use Sheets - not so.

If you have a gmail account etc you'll already have storage (as part of your mailbox) that can be used across any Google application - including Google Drive.

You can install a client on each computer and when you provide your username and password on each it will sync between them and the cloud storage, when you install from memory you will select a folder on your hard drive which you want to sync across cloud and other devices, likewise the same on any device you install the client on.

The only point I can make is if you have 2 computers A and B, you're changing the contents of files on A and B is turned off/not on-line you won't have the updates, only when you connect to the internet will B sync the files.

[sjg]

Mr Pointy said:

Just watch out for file locking - with some cloud services you can get into the situation where you have the file open on both laptop & PC & end up with sync issues.

It's a good point and something in favour of a Microsoft solution - even consumer OneDrive allows co-authoring so even if you do leave a file open elsewhere you can still go in and work on it from another machine.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/documen...