How to Protect a Folder or File from Accessing by a User Group in Windows 7

You may have some important files or folders in your computer. If you have given permission to access those files to all the users of your system, they may delete them accidentally. So you don’t want others to view the content of those folders and files which are very important for you. According to this tutorial, users (except administrators) need administrative permission to access, modify or delete the content of those files and folders. Follow the below steps.

1. Right click on a folder which you want to protect and click properties.
2. Then go to Security tab.
3. Then click Edit button. Security window will open. You will get the list of user accounts your system have.
4. Select which user account you want to protect from accessing the folder. If the account is not listed you need to add the it. So click the Add button.
5. Enter the account name and click Check Names button.
6. You will get the user accounts related to your search term. Select an account you want and click Ok button.
7. Now in the security window select the user account. At the bottom check all options under Deny. (You may check some specific options. But now your aim is to make the folder not to even open by others.) Then click OK button. An alert will be shown. Click Yes.
8. Then in the properties window click OK.

That is all. Your entire folder is now protected. The user group or user accounts you selected can’t view the folder content. Also, they can’t edit, rename and delete the files inside of it. Similarly do these steps for all the user accounts except administrator account. So, when they try to open the folder it will show an alert message like in the below image to deny them to access the folder and they will be requested to login as administrator.

If you want to protect a particular file these steps are same. As in the step 7 we checked all the permissions to deny. But you may choose specific permissions to deny like only Read. Protect all your important folders from others even from you(administrator). You can revert it by checking all the options under Allow (Refer step 7).

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