Can you password protect folders in windows 10

wigster

wigster

wigster

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Just been asked a question I have looked on my computer and cant seem to find a way to do it, I thought you could in previous versions of Windows.
 
You can simply encrypt a file or folder in it's properties, but that protects it from other logged in users reading it or it being read cold, so your user account would have access to it without having to enter a password. Does that fit the bill? If not, and you want to be presented with a password challenge at all times, I'm pretty sure it's a third party option only. 7zip is pretty good.
 
I wonder if you may be remembering the password challenge to connect to a Windows share in Windows 95 / 98 / ME.

Windows 10 Professional, Enterprise, and Education support the Encrypted File System, EFS. This encrypts files and folders on a user by user basis and is transparent - no passwords required. However, I suggest you read up on it thoroughly before implementing it and make sure you have multiple backups of the encryption keys as well as unencrypted backups of the data. I have known multiple people lose all their work because you cannot decrypt EFS without those keys, typically by reinstalling Windows without doing backups first.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-efs-encryption-windows-10
 
Thanks for the link I'm not sure what I'm remembering in the past versions of Windows, I thought you could but maybe not then.

The person asking has Windows 10 Home, so it looks like it will have to be software downloaded to the computer, Is there any free software?
 
Let's backtrack a little: why does your questioner want to password-protect a folder? If, for example, it's simply to protect from prying eyes then you could teach them about Windows' permissions system and having different accounts for each user.
 
JohnG7 said:
Folder Guard (bit costly) @ Folder Guard: Password protection software for Windows (winability.com)
Click to expand...

Cheers will look at that.

Quartz said:
Let's backtrack a little: why does your questioner want to password-protect a folder? If, for example, it's simply to protect from prying eyes then you could teach them about Windows' permissions system and having different accounts for each user.
Click to expand...

Yes it's from prying eyes also so no one messes up and deletes what is in the folders, problem is they don't know much about computers. I'm not able to go visit them and teach them about permissions. but that's certainly the best way to do it.
 
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