Troubleshoot synchronizing offline files

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.work_remotely (More info?)

See reply to your identical post in another group. If you need to post to
multiple groups, it's best to do so all at once in a single message
(separate the NG names with commas) so that everyone can follow the thread.
A lot of people subscribe to multiple groups, and this way you won't be
asking anyone to reproduce someone else's work, and everyone can benefit.

That said - the answer is, file synchronization isn't very smart. If he has
rights to modify items on the shared folder, it's going to be a matter of
who syncs last (or who modifies last, more to the point). You might want to
look into SecondCopy 2000 from www.centered.com (I personally like it a lot
better than offline files anyway) and set up a profile that does a one-way
copy instead of a sync for the folders in question. That way, when it syncs,
it will delete his local cached copies & overwrite with the 'live' data on
the server. You can set up separate profiles for different shares/folders so
that a true sync can happen with the home directories, etc., and not affect
the 'read only' one.

Judy wrote:
> I have a network directory that contains files such as sales reports,
> all the salespeople synchronize this directory when they log on and
> off the network, to insure they have the most up-to-date information.
> However, if a salesman changes an offline file on his laptop while he
> is offline and then logs back onto the network, I get HIS version in
> my network directory instead of the version I want. I want to be able
> to protect my shared network files so they can't be overwritten, but
> this can happen even if the files are password protected. On the other
> hand, I do want the guys to be able to update their own files in other
> directories and then synchronize them onto the network if they want
> to. Seems like this should be a no-brainer but I can't figure it out.
> Can anyone help me? TIA.