File exploer - why multiple public and documents folders

This is my file explorer tree. First question is, why is there a public folder under the PC name, and another one under Users. I think this was the same in Win 7. They are the same folder. It's confusing to have multiple public folders. Can I just delete Users\public?

Also note I have multiple Documents folders under PC name. How does this come about, and what can I do about it?



Similar problem on another computer. This was a Win 10 install over Win 7. Now I have two public folders.

Atom1 said:

This is my file explorer tree. First question is, why is there a public folder under the PC name, and another one under Users. I think this was the same in Win 7. They are not the same folder. It's confusing to have multiple public folders. Can I just delete Users\public?

They are not actually folders. They are shares (the green inverted T beneath then indicates that). You are looking at share names of all the folders being shared by ASUS7. It doesn't matter which PC you are looking at this with, it could even be ASUS7 itself, what you are seeing are the shares that ASUS7 is making available on the network.

Now it happens that both the Public folder and the User folder are being shared by ASUS7. As the Public folder is a sub-folder of Users what you are seeing is the Share called 'Public', the share called Users' and the folder called Public inside the 'Users' share.

Also note I have multiple Documents folders under PC name. How does this come about, and what can I do about it?

A share doesn't have to have the same name as the folder being shared, but by default you are offered the folder name as the share name when you set up sharing. Now every user on ASUS7 has their own Documents folder. The first user to share their Documents folder can use 'Documents' as the share name. But if a second user wants to share their Documents folder they can't use the name 'Documents' because it's already in use as a share. So they get offered 'Documents2' for their share name.



In the case of ASUS2 with its two 'Public' shares, it could be two different folder called Public being shared, or it may be the same folder being shared twice under different names. You can share a folder twice (or more) if you want. This is so that you can set up different share permissions depending on which name is used to connect to the share.

Thanks very much.

Atom1 said:

...what can I do about it?

You can go to ASUS7 and ASUS2 and stop sharing the folders you don't need. If you want to keep sharing them all, then you can either add a new more meaningful share name then remove the original ('Documents2', etc.) names, and/or add comments to help identify which Documents folder it actually is.



These comments can be seen by other computers on the network when the hover the mouse pointer over the share in File Explorer.