User Accounts In A Computer

[joko]

I am soon to be doing some work where i will be leaving my laptop unattended for a while and may need to allow others to use it.

so i want to separate my personal stuff so it stays only accessible by me.

so i am going to set up two user accounts - one for work stuff, and a personal one

there is also a guest account for people who don't need to access any of the work documents, and just need the net or something.

will this work? what happens to all my personal documents etc if i log in from the work account?
will i be able to access my stuff with a password or something, or will i have to log out and log in to personal again?

will the people have access to all programs etc?

is there a guide to this anywhere, so i can adjust settings etc?

i have set the accounts up but its basic info

thanks (im on win7)

[RATTER15]

Why not just set it up and test it from a different account.

[joko]

i have, i can see its almost like a new computer with access to most software, but i want to see what else i can do in it.

i dont want to have to log out every time i think of something that is in my personal account, such as a bookmark etc - i can't see any way of accessing my stuff though
also haven't really got time to bring across every single thing i might need prior to work, so wanted to do it as and when

any ideas?

[RATTER15]

I think you need the help of Chuckfickens on this one, from what I can see there is no way of merging the accounts, I think that is what you would need to do.

[ChuckFickens]

"what happens to all my personal documents etc if i log in from the work account?"

They are in your personal accounts user folder, which the work account shouldn't be able to access.

"will i be able to access my stuff with a password or something, or will i have to log out and log in to personal again?"

Log out and log in as personal, or just do a switch user and both accounts can be logged in at the same time, then you can switch between them fairly quickly.

"will the people have access to all programs etc? "

Generally, yes, although some programs give you an option when you install them to either install for all users or just current user, if you've installed any for just the current user then other users won't be able to access them.

"is there a guide to this anywhere, so i can adjust settings etc? "

What settings? the only real settings are the account type, generally either normal user or administrator, don't set the work account as an administrator otherwise they'll be able to access all your documents.

[RATTER15]

lol ^^ lol and there he is :-))

[boxtops]

Our systems are set up so you can "LOG OFF USER" rather than logging out, so someone else can then log in - they can only see files and folders which they themselves have permission to access.

[ChuckFickens]

Generally log of user and log out would be the same thing, certainly on a single computer (I don't know what setup you have at work)

Switch user does just what you seem to be saying you do though.

[joko]

thanks,

ok thats what i thought - i was hoping there might be an option within the work account to click on the personal account somewhere and access it with a password temporarily or something.
i was hoping there were more customisable options than the basic ones.

so how can i make documents available on both then? - so i can see single documents but in both accounts?

can i copy directly through to other accounts - or do i have copy everything to an external disk and then copy it back across?

would briefcase function help here perhaps?
so i can keep all docs up to date?

thanks

[ChuckFickens]

Put the documents in the c:\users\public\documents folder and they'll show in everyone's normal documents folder.

There should also be a link to the same fold in the side bar of any windows explorer window you can see by expanding libraries > documents.

[joko]

cheers chuck