In this case you can put in proper backups (to be able to recover documents) & auditing (to track who deleted or changed something). If the highest level they are assigned is read-only permissions they can only view the file, if they have Full Control they can do anything to the files - and those permissions cannot be changed without them having to log off & on again.

To my knowledge there's no default mechanism with Windows fileshares to dynamically change access levels based on a password - the users have whatever permissions they were granted when they logged in. That's why it's a Workgroup and not a Domain You will have to maintain the IDs as your user community changes - on each server - because a Workgroup doesn't have the central Active Directory. Once you have defined the User IDs on the server, you can define the folder access privileges based on the SERVER User IDs. In that case, you will want to define User IDs for each user ON THE SERVER, and require users to provide their ID and password when connecting to the server (the connection can be 'renewable on login' so that the users don't have to enter the ID and password each time they attempt to access the server). In a Workgroup, each computer has a separate list of User IDs. In a Domain, each user has a Domain-level User ID, and logs in to the Active Directory, NOT to the local computer. Of course, this is MUCH easier in a Domain, where all user privileges are defined by the Active Directory. You can define the access privileges - by user or by group - on a folder level, to be applied to all the files in the folder. If it's a real server, set up with the NTFS file system, you should be able to use file access control lists to give users READ ONLY access to the files in the folders. First, are you working in a Domain or a Workgroup? Second, is this a REAL server (running a server operating system), or a Windows XP box being USED as a server?

Can you lock a folder