Does anyone know how to password protect entire folders, rather than the individual documents in them? I use Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro (at work)

Thanks!

What are you trying to accomplish by password protecting the folder? If the goal is to protect files on your laptop in case it is stolen, then encryption is the way to go. In XP you would right-click on the folder, select properties, go to the "General" tab, click "Advanced..." and select encrypt contents.

Then the contents of the file or folder can only be read by someone logged in to the computer with your identity. However, you would not need to type your login and password every time you log in.

If the objective is to password protect a folder so that other users can access it as well using the same password, then I have no idea how to do it.

FolderGuard
http://winability.com/folderguard/

Thanks people, both these options look very helpful ^

Are you trying to share or just encrypt the folders?

I sometimes have to leave my computer for a while and others use my office for various purposes. I don't want anyone to be able to have a quick peek in the 'staff issues' folder for example. That's why I'd like to password protect it.

A non-technical solution that I use is to move confidential stuff onto my personal network drive whenever I am in the office. Others using my computer cant access. Its a bit of a pain having to copy onto laptop when taking away but this is fairly minor.

Of course doesnt work in situations where others need to use my laptop when on the road.

So, people use your computer, but you don't want them to have access to a certain folder containing confidential info.

Have you created users for each of the people using your computer, or just two, one for you and another for everyone else.

That way you can create security based on the users, and with each one having their own password, all you have to do is log off when you are not using your computer

Exactly.

Yes, but the thing is that (too) often people quickly need some information and logging on/off is not an option. This is not ideal, but it is the reality. Being able to password protect folders contaning sensitive information would be ideal. I think (but I haven't trialed it yet) that the software one of the others recommended might just do this.

IN XP switch user takes about 2 secs ::

Sure, but I can't check if my colleagues do it or not...

Create a secondary account FOR YOURSELF with all the sensitive information. This will work very well if your primary account is not an administrator account. (If other people are using that account, it shouldn't have admin privilages.) Set permissions to allow secondary access to files created with the primary account.

Here I should emphasize what jan_az was talking about: Switching users in Windows XP is as easy as pressing the Windows key + L. In fact, you can have commonly used documents up and running in one account while working from the other. If you were working on something and need to give up the computer, you don't have to close what you were working on to give someone else access to the workstation, just press Win+L and log in with your primary account. I gurantee this is faster than trying to determe which documents you need to close.

Since anyone can turn off the computer (i.e. by tripping on the power cord), be sure to save the documents you were working on or else you might lose your most recent changes.

Good points and that would be a smart way to work, at least on the XP computer. I'll check and see if it works on my 2000 machine too, but I suspect not.