SharePoint 2010 For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2

Sharing Your Documents

In This Chapter

Understanding what document libraries are and why they’re superior to file shares

Discovering lots of ways to get your documents into document libraries

Working with (and deleting) your documents

Retrieving a document after it has been deleted

You’re probably familiar with network file shares: the file systems that let people upload files to a shared network drive so that other people can access and use them. File shares, when they were invented, revolutionized the ability of organizations to keep files in relatively secure locations and manage who had access. But SharePoint has done the file share one (okay, a whole bunch) better.

SharePoint document libraries let you store and share files securely, and they also add features that help you manage things like document workflow (the processes that let people edit, comment on, and approve documents) and version histories (what happened to a file, and who did what). And although file shares give you one path through folders to your document, SharePoint document libraries give you other ...