What is the Creator Owner Account in Vista?

From time to time, you'll see a reference to Creator Owner in the Permissions window, but if you try to find the account by that name in one of the user account tools, you’ll come up empty handed.

Why? Because Creator Owner is not an account.

Rather, it's a generic moniker that protects an object by ensuring that only the object's owner can modify it.

Say a user on your PC creates an Excel spreadsheet and puts it in a shared folder. Then, another user logs in to the same PC and opens the document. In some cases, and depending on the file's permissions, the second user won't be able to make changes and save the file until he assumes ownership of it.

The subtleties of this scheme can be complex and rather confusing, but luckily, they aren't particularly important. When that second user clicks the Owner tab in the Advanced Security Settings window, the Current owner may be Creator Owner rather than the actual username of the person who created the file. No matter; the new user just selects his own username from the list and clicks OK.

Tags: share,permissions

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