Windows 10: Is there a way to password protect or encrypt file folders in Windows 10 home edition?

I have Windows 10 Home Edition. I am trying to make the contents of a file folder READ ONLY and password protect the "read only" setting for that file folder. I do not want to HIDE the folder. The folder contains all the files & documents up to my previous year end for my small business. All relevant files are removed and carried forward to the new "current year" folder. I still may need to refer to and sometimes transfer documents from the previous year's folder, however I just want it locked to prevent accidentally adding, deleting or changing the contents of the folder. it would be

:)

 

Password protected folder/file in Windows 7 ?

Simply

I would like windows to ask for a password when ANYBODY opens up a "password protected folder" , nothing more. This is an epic fail for win7 to not have a native feature like this , ... workaround?


-no freaking external programs
-no encryption
-not via policy settings (usless for network users)
-the web is full of nooby-youtube videos and cheap 123 advert-sites which includes: external programs, zip arcihves, other useless stuff ... but there's some command prompt instructions which i didn't tried yet.


The folder is shared on the network that's why is currently useless to use security policy.

Unless you find a way to select other network users via security policy.

I never found a way to link another PC with the user of another , the "locations" is always from local computer , that's stupid.

There's also an option to "encrypt contents to secure data" ... that should automatically make a password protected , but it's totally useless , that's the password it takes from the user account passworld , plus , it's encrypting , it will take 22 hours to encrypt a 225 GB folder, which i need FAST accesss and not for archival.

 

Private folders encrypted and password protected folders

Im posting this because i've been looking for a free tool like this sense XP thought people should know about it *Toast :toast:

Windows 7 when combined with Pismo get’s an incredible feature of creating password protected folders ( *.pfo ) which they call as Private Folders. It is just like any other folder to which you can add any folder and do any operation but not password protections just comes out of the box in Windows 7.

Updated :

To create a private folder, you need to make a right click, select new and then private folders




How to create private folder in windows 7




To re-lock right click unmount

Windows 7
private folders

Here are the features which will interest you :

* Password protection.
* Mount visibility to owner or entire users group.
* In case you make it available to entire user group, you get option to make it available as network drive
* Type of access to users , Read or Read and Write

Private folders are just incredible way to share private data with set of people you want. This is what makes private folders rock. Its just not securing your data but also sharing data privately with others. You can download Pismo Private Folder from here

 

Password Protecting Sensitive Data

If you use bitlocker to encrypt the folder then it uses your Windows credentials to unlock the certificate store and allow you access to the folder. This means that they have to know your Windows password to log into Windows to gain access to the folder. Also, if they use one of those 3rd party password reset tools to change or reset your password the certificate store will reject the new credentials and not allow access to the folder. The same goes if they try to put the drive in another computer, there would be no way for them to read the encrypted folder. The only way this method would fail would be if you left your computer on and logged in, and someone walked up to it and started using it.

As for an encrypted Zip file using 7-zip, there is no way to access the data in the file without the password.