FileMaker Pro 9 Sharing Howto

1. Create or open the database you wish to share.

2. Go to File then the Manage submenu and select Accounts and Privileges.

   

3. FIRST, edit the Admin account and set a password.

4. Then create New accounts. Set Account is authenticated via to FileMaker and set an account name and password. Set Account Status to Active and set the Privilege Set appropriately. You can edit privilege sets to have more granular control over what users can and cannot do, or just use the defaults.

5. When you've finished creating accounts and setting privileges for now, go to File then Sharing and select FileMaker Network. Set Network Sharing to On. It should then show your IP address; make a note of this.

   

6. Select Specify users by privilege set and select the appropriate set for this database.

7. Optionally, check the Don't display in Open Remote File dialog option, if you don't want FileMaker Pro clients to be able to see this database at all on your host. (Your approved users will still be able to connect -- see below.)

8. Tell your remote users to go to File then Open Remote File. Depending on whether you checked the "Don't display" option AND whether your users are on the same subnet as the host, they may or may not see the database in the list of hosts. If they do, they should be able to just click their way in; otherwise, have them type or paste into the Network File Path box, something like

   fmnet:/your-ip-address/nameofdatabase