Our third weekly installment of PCstats Q & A comes to us via email from Andy.

Q: I read your guide on syncing two computers in windows xp. However I'm having trouble syncing a folder. I would like the 'my documents' folder to automatically sync between two computers. Is this possible? Thanks.

A: It is possible, but not directly. As far as I m aware, you cannot have your 'my documents' folder on one PC synchronize directly with the 'my documents' folder on another PC without using some sort of third party program. Offline files only allows for a one-way synchronization of files from a central store.

You can make it so all computers have access to change and update all the files in one folder of one PC on your network though. The method of doing this through offline files is by creating a second folder within 'my documents' on one computer and sharing that system's 'my document' folder over the network.

On the other system(s) that need to share access, enable offline files (making sure to create a desktop shortcut to the offline files folder), navigate over the network to the 'my documents' share you created, right click on the new folder within the share and choose 'make accessible offline.' Choose the default options in the offline files wizard. Now all the files in that folder are available in the 'offline files folder' of each PC that performs these steps. Changing the files will cause them to be updated at either end. The only limitation is that you can only create new files from the original PC.