Windows Vista Security: Praxisorientierte Sicherheit für Profis

Sharing Your Data

|

411

Working Offline and Syncing

Whenever your computer is not connected to the local area network (LAN), you are

considered to be working offline. When you are working offline, you can access only

network folders that are cached on your computer for offline use. When you recon-

nect to the network, Windows Vista automatically will synchronize any changes you’ve

made to the files while offline. Sometimes there may be conflicts between changes

you’ve made to files and changes other people have made to files. You can manage

conflicts and the synchronization process in the Sync Center, shown in Figure 11-22.

In the Sync Center, you’ll see a sync partnership for every shared folder that has

locally cached contents. You can work with the Sync Center by following these steps:

1. Click Start

➝ Control Panel. In the Control Panel, click Network and Internet.

2. On the Network and Internet page, click Sync Center.

3. In the Sync Center, currently defined sync partnerships are listed according to

name, status, progress, conflict count, error count, and category. You can now

manage syncing using the following techniques:

• To manually sync all offline files and folders, click Sync All. Sync All is avail-

able only when no individual sync partnerships are selected.

• To manually sync a specific network share, click the sync partnership that

you want to work with and then click Sync.

• To check for errors, click “View sync results” under Tasks. You can use the

sync details to determine when syncing was started, stopped, or com-

pleted, and to determine whether there are problems with the synchroniza-

tion configuration.

Figure 11-22. Checking the sync status

412

|

Chapter 11: Securing and Sharing Your Data

Synchronization conflicts can occur if you make changes to a file offline that is

updated online by someone else. You can view and resolve synchronization conflicts

by following these steps:

1. In the Sync Center, click “View sync conflicts” under Tasks.

2. Any existing conflicts are listed in the main pane. Double-click a conflict you

want to resolve.

3. You can now:

• Click the version you want to keep. To keep the local version and overwrite

the network version, click the version listed as On This Computer. To keep

the network version and overwrite the local version, click the version listed

as being on the shared network location.

• Click Keep Both Versions to write the local version to the shared network

location with a new filename. The new filename will be the same as the old

filename, but with a numeric suffix, indicating the version increment.

Devices you’ve used with Windows Media Player can have sync partnerships with

your computer as well. You can view and manage these sync partnerships by com-

pleting the following steps:

1. Connect the device to your computer.

2. In the Sync Center, click “Set up new sync partnerships” under Tasks. As

Figure 11-23 shows, you’ll see a list of devices with sync partnerships.

3. When you right-click the device and then select Set Up, Windows Vista opens

Windows Media Player with the device selected and displays the device’s Win-

dows Media Player – Device Setup dialog box.

4. Complete the setup of the device, as discussed in the “Syncing Your Media to

MP3 Players and Other Devices” section in Chapter 8.

Sharing Your Data

|

413

Figure 11-23. Viewing sync partnerships