Alan Quatermain

Alan Quatermain

The Tumblog of one Jim Dovey, iOS Software Chief Architect at Kobo in Toronto, Ontario.
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Windows → Mac File Transfers

Okay, not really a programming question, but I figure I know how to answer it (broadly at least) so why not?

I generally go for the path of least resistance. While it’s usually possible to burn data to a CD/DVD and use the good ol’ SneakerNet to move it across, Mac OS X supports Windows’ chosen network file-sharing protocol out of the box. You just need to see that it’s all set up properly.

Now, there are two ways of doing this:

  1. Create a shared folder on your Windows machine which you can access from your Mac to read from.
  2. Create a shared folder on your Mac which you can access from Windows to write to.

Since I don’t have a (working) Windows machine to hand to confirm setup instructions for option 1, I’ll go with option 2. There are a few relatively minor steps here:

  1. Create a folder somewhere. On your desktop is a nice enough place.
  2. Select the new folder and press ⌘-i, or choose ‘File → Get Info…’ from the menu bar.
  3. Check the ‘Shared folder’ option in the ‘General’ section of the inspector window. You can close it now.
  4. Open System Preferences and go into the Sharing pane.
  5. Select ‘File Sharing’ in the left-hand table. Ensure it’s checked (on).
  6. Click the ‘Options…’ button to the right.
  7. Check the ‘Share files and folders using SMB (Windows)’ checkbox, and check the box next to your username in the table below. You will be prompted to enter a password— this is the password you’ll use when accessing this share from Windows.
  8. Click ‘Show All’, and go into Network.
  9. Your current network interface should be selected — click ‘Advanced…’.
  10. On the ‘WINS’ tab of the sheet which appears, note the ‘NetBIOS Name’ value.
  11. Enter a value for ‘Workgroup’. A reasonable default is ‘workgroup’. This name, and the ‘NetBIOS Name’, are not case sensitive.
  12. Click ‘OK’ to close the sheet, then click ‘Apply’ at the bottom-right of the window.

At this point, you should be able to go to your Windows machine and go into ‘My Network’ (or is it called ‘Network Neighbourhood’, or something completely different now?) on your Start menu. Theoretically you should be able to see your Mac already, under the name you noted earlier. If not, use the navigation controls to go upwards and look for the workgroup called ‘workgroup’ (or whatever you chose to name yours). Go into that, and you should see your Mac. Double-click on it and you’ll see your share points. Double-click the one you want and you’ll be prompted for a username/password. Enter your Mac username and the password you entered in step 7 above. Et voilà. Drop files into that folder to put them on your Mac.

Now, this can be a little flaky. It might be worth rebooting both machines if it doesn’t appear to work. If the ‘My Network’ option isn’t available at all on your Windows machine you may need to install the ‘Client for Microsoft Networks’. I’ll leave those instructions to more experienced Windows people though.