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Some of you might have noticed it before - the "Briefcase" option in the New menu you get right-clicking in a folder or on the desktop. In this tutorial I'll explain what Briefcase is briefly and describe how to use it so you can always be sure to have your files when you need them.

Windows Briefcase goes as far back as Windows 95 and the days of floppies. Before all your polished sync toys of today came about Briefcase was the tool of choice for syncing files between a computer and a floppy.

Though such an old feature of Windows, its still pretty nice to know about and use, especially if you perfer builtin tools over having third-party tools. Because its a feature of Windows you can accurately use it regardless of whether or not you have admin rights on the machine you're working on. I perfer it because of its simplicity.

In modern terms you can use it to sync files between computers and storage media. I use it all the time for example to sync office/work related files between my desktop, laptop, and flash drive, so I can be sure to have access to those oh so important files whenever needed.

Lets say you got a desktop with your files and you would like to start syncing the files to your flash drive to have on the go. First you well want to create a new briefcase on your flash drive. Double click on it and you'll get a brief introduction. Click Close. Now Briefcase works best when you sync folders (though you can sync individual files), so I would open the parent folders. Right click drag on the folders you want in the briefcase. You need to drag them to the briefcase, so you need two explorer windows up. When you get there release and select the "Sync Copy Here" option. This well copy all of the folders to the briefcase.

Now whenever you want to update briefcase it is a very simple proccess. Open the briefcase once more in explorer -> Briefcase -> Update All. This well pop up a dialog showing you all the revisions and recommended sync actions to take. You can change actions if you want by right-clicking on the action by the pair you want to change, and when you're ready you can procceed with the update. The update proccess well work both ways. If you've made any recent changes to the version in the briefcase on your flash drive the version on the desktop well be updated and vice versa. Files in folders are deleted and created automatically if you've synced folders.

As the modern introduction message you get in Vista points out for briefcase, briefcase could be used also syncing to other computers. Its actually a good alternitive to the "Offline Files" feature Microsoft rips out of the home editions of Windows that some of us could have benefitied from. The drawback is you must sync manually, where offline file syncs can be setup to sync across a network with another computer hosting the synced folders on login/logoff automatically. One could actually do the opposite of what I said above too - creating the briefcase on the flash drive that is, and instead create two briefcases on both their laptop and desktop computers or as many computers as they've got, keep the synced orginal folders on the flash drive, and whoa! Ability to sync a set of folders and their updates across all your computers using your flash drive.

So when you want simple, give Windows Briefcase a try.