[Mulderator]

Well, I spent quite some time researching how to set it up so that I could get into my server at work from home and still keep pretty good security. Now I know that VPN (virtual private network) is probably the best option, but its also tricky to set up. With the help of TechGuy, mole, and Rockn, among others, I ended up downloading an FTP server (Serv-U) and running that on my server at work. You can set it up so that it only allows a specific IP address to access the server. We use a Linksys router at work and you need to have it (or any other router) forward ports 20 and 21. The program (Serv-U) has a free version, which is all most people will need.

On the remote computer (my home computer), if you don't have an FTP client, all you need to do is type in "ftp://username@ipaddress" (where "username" is a name set up on the ftp server and "ipaddress" is the ipaddress of the server computer) and you can download or upload files from explorer. However, I wanted to go a step further, and that would be to give me the option of opening the remote files right from MS Office programs directly. For some reason, Word and Excel would not open the files from the FTP location I setup (Word would open other files from ftp sites such as Microsoft, so it must have something to do with the settings on the FTP server, but I never figured that out).

In any event, I downloaded a program called WebDrive which creates a drive on your computer from an FTP location. The program is about 30 or 40 bucks or so, but it solved the problem with MS Office because using Webdrive, Word/Excel will open the files directly (i.e., webdrive maps a drive letter to the FTP server). What's nice is that your not actually working on the file, webdrive creates a temporary file on your hard drive as a working copy and then when you save it, it saves it back to the remote location under the name of the file.

The only issue I came across what that when you open a file remotely, its not "locked". Someone can open the same file for editing. That's not a problem for me because its only me and my secretary in this particular office location.

Anyone with any ideas on solving that editing problem? Also, if anyone has any better options, I'd be interested in hearing that as well.

PS--I do know about Remote Desktop, but that seemed to me to be to big of a security problem and also, it really does not work very well (you get disconnected and it tends to drag at times).