How to Set Up Home Folders for User Accounts (298403)

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Home folders and the My Documents folder make it easy for an administrator to back up user files and manage user accounts by collecting many or all of a user's files in one location.

In Microsoft Windows NT versions 4.0 and 3.x, an assigned home folder became a user's default folder for the Open and Save As dialog boxes, for command prompt sessions, and for all programs without a defined working folder. An assigned home folder can be a local folder on a user's computer or a shared folder on the network, and can be assigned to a single user or many users.

In Windows 2000, the My Documents folder is an alternative for home folders but does not replace them. When a user tries to save or open a file, most programs determine whether to use the home folder or My Documents in one of two ways:

• Some programs first look in the home folder for files that match the type of file that is to be opened or saved (for example, .doc or .txt files). If a file with that extension is found, the program opens the home folder and does not use the My Documents folder. If a file of that type is not found, the program opens the My Documents folder.
• In other programs, the home folder is ignored, regardless of whether or not the home folder contains any files.

When Windows 2000 is installed over a version of Windows NT, programs that have stored documents in the home folder continue to open and save documents in the home folder. However, if the program is installed after Windows 2000 was installed, or if the program was never used to create a file in Windows NT, the program uses the My Documents folder to open and save files.

How to Set Up Home Folders

1. Create a Home folder on the server that will be used to store all of the user's home folders. To do so, use Windows Explorer, to create a folder on the hard disk. In this example, the folder is named Home.
2. Share the Home folder with Full Control share permissions for the Everyone group. To do so, right-click the folder, click Properties, click the Sharing tab, click Share this folder, and then click OK.
3. Start the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in.
4. Locate the user account for which you want to set up the home folder. By default, all users are in the Users container.
5. Right-click the user account for which you want to specify a home folder, click Properties, click the Profile tab, click Connect, specify a drive letter, type a path in the To box, and then click OK. Note that you can use a network path, such as the following path, if you have already created the user's individual folder in the Home share

   \\server name\share name\folder name

   or a local path, such as:

   c:\users\folder name

   You can substitute %username% for the last subfolder in the path if you have not already created each individual user's folder in the Home share, such as:

   \\server name\share name\%username%

   The home folder is created (if you are using the %username% variable), and the permissions on the folder are set to Administrators Full Control and the individual user with Full Control.

For additional information, please view the following Microsoft Web site: