Sometimes, the Internet is not your friend.

I’d heard that Leopard made Windows Vista file sharing much easier, so I assumed it would “just work”, but when my Mac did not show up on my Vista network, I turned to the trusty Internet for help.

Turns out I should’ve just RTFM. Google-ing for “leopard vista file sharing” (or similar searches) yields nothing but obsolete false alarms about bogus problems and wild goose chase solutions involving complex regedit hacks and such.

In hopes of saving others this pain, here are the steps in Leopard’s Mac Help, which worked for me right off the bat:

To set up Windows file sharing:

1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, and then click Sharing.
2. Select File Sharing in the list, then click Options.
3. Select “Share files and folders using SMB.” (This is the key – Leopard by default only shares files using AFP.)
4. Select the name of the user account that will share files and enter the password for that user.
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The following step was not necessary for me – my Mac showed up in my Vista network as soon as I enabled SMB file sharing.

6. Give the address of your computer to Windows users you want to share your computer.

The other stupid user issue I ran into was not realizing that the “Drop Box” folder in my Mac’s “Public” folder is write-only, so you can only put files into it (hence the name). Files placed in the Public folder are visible to all Vista users. I did not need to authenticate or anything – it all “just works” as one would expect.