Password Protect Files or Folders on MAC OS X

If you were using any of the MS Office products then you would apply password protection to the document from within Word/Excel/PowerPower.

In OS X, Windows too, you can protect your files by setting up permissions on the folder in which they are stored.
Using the "get Info" command, you can assign users Read & Write, Read Only, Write Only(A drop box) or No Access.
More information on this can be found in Finder > Help.

Your last sentence is confusing. Do you intend to share these files across a network, with the XP/Vista boxes connecting to the Mac or are you just going to move the folders/files with a thumbdrive?

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If you do not have multiple users set up, whole family or something use one account and you wish to password protect a file or folder, without having to Log out of the computer and have other people use a Guest Log in....

Hilight the file or folder, press control and click the mouse, go to MORE INFO. Then click on the "padlock" image to be able to change the folder settings. You will only be able to lock it or unlock it if you have the password for the user account. After clicking the padlock, it will prompt you to enter the password. Then, where it allows access to specific users, on the main user, where it says privilege, select "Write Only (drop box)". So now, even yourself will need a password to be able to change the access level. Voila!

When you want to unlock the folder, click on the "padlock" image and again, it will prompt you to enter the password...then you can unlock the settings of the folder, and change it back to "read & write".

Hope this helps someone, it took me hours to figure out how to do it!!!!