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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users System
In a previous hint, the author pointed out that iTunes libraries can be shared among users on the same machine using aliases to the Shared folder. The same can be done for iCal and Address Book.

iCal:
  1. Create a Calendars folder under /Users/Shared/.
  2. Under each user's Library folder, remove the Calendars folder (be sure to back up any existing calendars). In its place, create a symlink to the shared Calendars folder - if working from the User's Library folder, type ln -s /Users/Shared/Calendars Calendars.
  3. Make sure that all users have permissions to both read and write all files in, and including, the Calendars folder.
This may require some tweeking, but it should work. Also note that this approach means ALL of your calendars are shared.

Address Book:
  1. Create an AddressBook folder under /Users/Shared/
  2. Under each user's ~/Library/Application Support folder, remove the AddressBook folder (be sure to back up any existing address books!). In its place, create a symlink to the shared AddressBook folder - if working from the User's ~/Library/Application Support folder, type ln -s /Users/Shared/AddressBook AddressBook.
  3. Make sure that all users have permissions to both read and write all files in, and including, the AddressBook folder.
This may require some tweeking, but it should work. Also note that this approach means ALL of your Addresses are shared.

Finally, please note that aliases do not work. You must use symlinks.

[robg adds: I haven't tried this one...]
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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users | 11 comments | Create New Account
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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users
Authored by: mm2270 on Mar 04, '03 10:45:44AM

Hmm.. interesting hint. Now, I wonder if this method could be expanded somehow to work over a local network, say, to have the shared calendar files located on a central file server, and give multiple users access to it. Does anyone know if that's even remotely feasible?



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Yeah, I'm also curious, will this work on a LAN?
Authored by: pwharff on Mar 04, '03 11:05:54AM

I'd be very much interested in knowing if this would work on a LAN and what happens if 2 different users would access the Address Book at the same time?



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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users
Authored by: kerouassady on Mar 04, '03 11:42:15AM

For sharing over a network, I think publishing the calendar to a web server (even the local web sharing folder) then having it automatically update would be the better solution. Having multiple people writing to the same file at the same time is bad, very bad.



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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users
Authored by: edalzell on Mar 04, '03 11:52:45AM

I have done this for the Address Book, but I was unable to share Calendars (still trying though).

Initially, those instructions are valid. The problem is if one user modifies the Address Book, then the other user gets an empty address book!

This is due to the permissions. They are changed when the address book is modified to the current user. This makes it inaccessible to the other user.

I created a small script that is run at log on that chmod 666 the AddressBook.data file. This way all user can edit and access the file.



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Script needed to make the address hint work....
Authored by: sundown on Mar 05, '03 07:32:17PM

Follow this hint's instructions http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20021210051526829&query=eudora modified for the address book files. it's an easy fix.



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Script needed to make the address hint work....
Authored by: gdelfino on May 29, '03 11:59:50PM
This is how I modified the script on that hint:
#!/bin/sh
echo "Changing addressbook Folder owner to `whoami` ..."
chown -R `whoami` /Users/Shared/addressbook/
chmod -R a+rw     /Users/Shared/addressbook/
echo "Done!"
then I did a
sudo chown root scriptname.sh
and a
sudo chmod 4755 scriptname.sh
It now works fine, but I think that something is wrong because the files become owned by root at login instead of being owned by the respective user:
drwxrwxrwx   8 root  wheel     272 May 29 23:52 .
drwxrwxrwt  10 root  wheel     340 May 29 23:35 ..
-rwxrwxrwx   1 root  wheel    6148 May 29 07:40 .DS_Store
-rw-rw-rw-   1 root  wheel  458752 May 29 23:51 ABPerson.index
-rw-rw-rw-   1 root  wheel  316625 May 29 23:51 AddressBook.data
-rw-rw-rw-   1 root  wheel  819880 May 29 23:51 AddressBook.data.beforesave
-rw-rw-rw-   1 root  wheel  979497 May 29 23:51 AddressBook.data.previous
drwxrw-rw-   9 root  wheel     306 Apr 29 20:15 Images
The problem is that a third user (my daugther maybe) could log in and erase my address book. Does anyone know how to modify this script for better security?

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Shared Address Book doesn't work for me
Authored by: jecwobble on Mar 22, '03 12:59:13PM

I backed up my wife's address book files/directories in her Library folder, then followed these steps. It didn't work- she just had a blank address book. My links to the shared book still work though.



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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users - what abount Palm data?
Authored by: jamesoliver on Apr 07, '03 12:14:01PM

I tried this and will make modifications to account for user mods and
login - Thanks. Will this same approach work for sharing palm data?
Wife and I use separate accounts, but want to use one set of calendar
date so I have no excuse when I am late.

Jim



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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users
Authored by: gdelfino on Jun 29, '03 12:12:11AM

The solution mentioned in this hint and comments fail to take into account that the users sharing the Address Book should have differennt "My Card" information.

This is specially important now that Safari and iChat rely on this information. Does any one know how to change "my Card" from the command line?



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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users
Authored by: awkohr on Apr 02, '04 04:08:21PM

An answer on the would this work over the network.
I just tried using this hint for ical in combination with the do it yourself sharepoints hint on two 10.3.3 boxes.
I moved the calander to the share point & made a symbolic link to it on the host system
I then logged into the sharepoint and made a symbolic link on the client system.
In both cases ical would read out the data fromt he symbolic link but when you went to save it would overwrite the symbolic link with a file for the calendar. So nobody got the others updates.



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Share Calendars and Address Books with multiple users
Authored by: vatolin on Oct 25, '04 07:02:02AM

I think it would be neccessary to have a script, that quits the iCal-session of the current user when switching onto another user. And another script, that starts a new iCal session of the user switched onto.

When switching the user after changing some entries in iCal, the next user switched onto can see the changed entries only if the previous user did quit iCal.

Is there anywhere a script that can do that?

Thanks and kind regards. Friedrich



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