I'm trying to make file sharing between two iMacs, one running OS 12.6.3 and the other one running 10.14.6. That one has a 'public folder" but the newer one does not. I'm baffled. Printer sharing works great but file sharing does not work at all. Thanks for any help
iMac 27″, 12.6
If there really is no Public folder at ~/Public, you can create one.
From the Finder, Go > Home. You can create anything you want in that directory. File > New Folder and name it "Public" Then, under Sharing, provide read / write access for "everyone".
These Apple Support documents explain how to do that:
Control access to your Public folder on Mac - Apple Support
Access a Mac user’s Public folder and Drop Box - Apple Support
If there really is no Public folder at ~/Public, you can create one.
From the Finder, Go > Home. You can create anything you want in that directory. File > New Folder and name it "Public" Then, under Sharing, provide read / write access for "everyone".
These Apple Support documents explain how to do that:
Control access to your Public folder on Mac - Apple Support
Access a Mac user’s Public folder and Drop Box - Apple Support
thanks to the people who responded. I had an unexpected solution/answer/end to this question that brings up a more serious issue which is how to be sure that files of any kind (in my case digital images, videos, digital sheet music Word and XL files and Mac archives) survive the relentless upgrades and tweaks of the OS. I was trying to create file sharing between two iMacs as shown above. With the help of Apple support techs, we achieved a very convoluted and complicated way to make file sharing "work", but the file I wanted to transfer, a Contacts archive file from the newer to the older iMac would not open! Some tweak to Contacts occurred over the years from Mojave to Monterey that ensured the Contacts file would be unusable, not backwards compatible and useless. I never thought about stuff like that before. I'm wondering if the same fate awaits all my other files. Is this the situation, that OS files like Contacts don't last? That they may be unusable? That every file I've got on my Monterey iMac might just be unaccessible when I make the leap to the M chip? I don't know much about Cloud storage but maybe files there might be affected. What is the use of making backups if they can't be read by the upgraded computer?
Any ideas about this?
... the file I wanted to transfer, a Contacts archive file from the newer to the older iMac would not open!
and
That every file I've got on my Monterey iMac might just be unaccessible when I make the leap to the M chip?
... are two separate concepts. As far as macOS and other Apple programs go, it is normal and expected for upgrades to migrate files from older to newer versions relatively seamlessly. It has been that way since forever. Every Mac that I have ever bought has inherited the contents of the Macs they replaced, even to the point old printer drivers that can no longer be installed (for example) continue to function.
On the other hand expecting anything to be backwards-compatible is not advisable and almost never works. A Time Machine backup created with Monterey (for another example) may or may not be usable or even readable by Mojave. It was never intended to be used that way.
The Public Folder is apart of every Mac installation and can be fund at
HD/Users/Your Name/Piblic
Has the name Public Folder been changed to Enclosing Folder?
