I can never find my files on the network

Choosing a central location to save your files makes your network more secure and productive.

Setting up a network is the most productive thing a business can with do with its computers. But if you don’t setup the file sharing correctly you can find files being scattered all over the network. This creates a number of problems.

The most common problem is never being able to find any data. With files hidden on different drives you can never be sure which file is where. Worse still you may end up with a number of different versions of the same document. Nominate the best, or the least used, computer as the "file server" and save all your documents to it.

Having all your data on the one hard drive simplifies backup. You can just backup the relevant directories on the one computer. The simpler the backup procedure, the more likely it is to get done.

Windows computers that share their printers and files will broadcast the fact across the network. This can slow the network down. Only enabling sharing on computers that actually have printers or folders available will improve network performance.

Keeping things simple on computers is a great way to avoid problems. Minimising the things shared on a network and the number of locations files can hide will improve your network performance. The whole point of having a network is to improve the productivity of your office. So make it work for you.