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FM Pro 12 Sharing

My office OS is Windows 7. We use peer to peer tc/ip. I use an external hard drive connected to our network to act as a file server on which fm files are stored. There are two clients on the network each with their own FM 12 software. On both machines, I went into Filemaker Network settings and selected Network Sharing On, but the second client to access the file gets pop up message "Filename" is currently in use and could not be opened... telling me to use Remote command ..

Should the file not open since network sharing has been selected?

Will Loving

The correct way to do hosting with FileMaker Pro (as opposed to FileMaker Server) on a server-less network would be to have the files reside on one person's computer, the person who will be using the files most and who can have FileMaker Pro open at all times, even if it's in the background.

The file(s) are opened in FileMaker Pro on what will be considered the "Host" machine. Anyone else who wishes to connect to these files on the network does so by opening FileMaker Pro and either clicking the "Remote" button in the "Open File" dialog, or going to File -> Open Remote. Since Network Sharing is turned on for the Host machine, the Host machine should appear under "Local Hosts" and when you click on it the hosted files should be visible.

Guest users should NOT be accessing the file by going to the remote drive and simply double-clicking. This bypasses FileMaker's networking and data integrity checks. And, in general, files should not be hosted across the network, meaning not from a NAS or other network storage device. Hosted files should live on the same machine as the application that is doing the hosting, be it FM Pro or FM Server.

Make sure that in addition to have in Network Sharing turned on, each of the files in the same dialog is set to "All Users" or "Some Users".

adammatthews

ASKER

What if I wanted to have remote users access from the internet?

adammatthews

ASKER

Also, is there any way for the client to automate the process with a desktop icon?

SOLUTION