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Share one Address Book among multiple users Apps
This is how to share the Address Book on a single Mac with each user of the machine. No syncing is needed -- all users will work on the same data.
  1. Have a separate partition with "Ignore permissions" checked in the Get Info box.
  2. Make sure you have synced all Address Books via import-export.
  3. Copy the Address Book folder you want to use as the master from /Users -> user_name -> Library -> Application Support to the other partition.
  4. Delete the original folder for each user (after verifying the copy), and make a symbolic link from the new location of the master Address Book folder. Symbolic links are made in the Terminal: ln -s path_origin path_alias.
  5. For each additional user: Delete the original folder and make a symbolic link.
This works on networks, too. But it is very slow when searching. My strategy for syncing the network (three macs, four users): My Address Book on my personal Mac is the master. Every new or changed entry on another Mac is dragged to a group called "New." Once in a while, I export the new entries to the master Address Book and check them. After that, I zip the Address Book folder and install them on the other Macs. The symbolic links will still work.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]
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Share one Address Book among multiple users | 16 comments | Create New Account
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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: j-beda on Dec 03, '04 10:04:54AM

There was a discription of how to do this type of thing in MacAddict a few months back that I could never get to work (and others had similar problems) because it seemed as though "Address Book" would reset the ownership and permissions of the data files each time it was run - so setting the permissions to something like 777 would not "stick" as different people accessed the files. The author of the aricle claimed that he did not experience such problems in the MacAddict forums - I would provide a link but macaddict.com is not currently reachable by my machine - though that might be a local problem rather than a problem at their end.

Putting the files onto a seperate volume with permissions ignored would seem to get around this difficulty.



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: TvE on Dec 05, '04 03:54:40AM

"…it seemed as though "Address Book" would reset the ownership and permissions of the data files each time it was run…"

Well - that's exactly what Disk Utility's "Repair Persmission" task is supposed to do so when you "Repair Permissions" you could expect to loose those changes anyways.
It repairs the permissions that somehow has changed, obviously it does not matter if that change occured as an error or as a "smart" idea from the user ;-)

I *think* you should be able to get it to work by moving the address book file to a new location (EG to /Users/Shared) and then create the symlinks/aliases - no need for a new partition!



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: j-beda on Dec 06, '04 12:41:26PM
I *think* you should be able to get it to work by moving the address book file to a new location (EG to /Users/Shared) and then create the symlinks/aliases - no need for a new partition!

For me at least, the symlink/aliases resulted in files that reverted to the old premissions/ownerships (I think that AddressBook creates new files each time, and does not inherit the old files' permissions). The new partition with "Ignore Permissions" would overcome this "feature".

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and iCal, iPhoto, iTunes too...
Authored by: rhowell on Dec 03, '04 01:24:01PM

This is the method I use to share the databases of Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, and iTunes between all the users in my family. Safari is another possibility, too.

The key here is to have the information stored on a volume with permissions disabled.



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Tiger may fix this.
Authored by: jscotta on Dec 03, '04 02:36:57PM

I say "may" because nothing is sure until you have your hands on it and it is working. But I recall from one of the reports on Tiger that the Address Book in Tiger has a feature that will allow for sharing it. I don't know all the functionality but I like the idea of Apple supported sharing over having to make a work-around.

---
Windows because I have to. OS X because I want to.



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Tiger may fix this.
Authored by: rhowell on Dec 03, '04 06:10:28PM
Like iTunes and iPhoto, this sharing will probably require that the Address Book, iCal, etc. be running in each user's account to be seen. This hint doesn't require that.

I agree, though, it would be great if Tiger allows multiple users to share a single database, and allow each user read/write access.

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Tiger may fix this.
Authored by: shavenyak on Dec 03, '04 06:26:19PM

Even better would be if you could have multiple address books - perhaps a personal book for each user and a shared address book for everyone on the machine / network. Of course, you could use LDAP for the shared directory, but setting that up is not for the faint of heart.



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Tiger may fix this.
Authored by: kylephoto760 on Dec 03, '04 11:00:35PM

I've been working on that. At the rate I'm going, I'll either be gray or bald by the time I turn 21 (in March.) Know of any how-tos?



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: kaolgal on Dec 04, '04 02:47:00PM

What is the reason why we couldn't just use an alias in this instance? Why a symbolic link? And could you explain exactly how to create one?



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: chris_on_hints on Dec 06, '04 09:27:52AM

Symbolic links make the program think its working with the original file, which an alias does not (in some situations it does, but not all)

a "sym link", as they are called, are created using the terminal command "ln":

ln -s original_file place_to_put_the_link

That will do it. remember that you can type "ln -s " and then drag and drop the thing you want to create the sym link onto the terminal window.... the directory and file name will be entered for you. type "man ln" to get more info.....



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: edalzell on Dec 04, '04 07:38:02PM

If you don't want to put the files on a seperate volume, you need something like WinSwitch, that runs a script when you switch users.

I have a script that goes through the appropriate directories and sets the permissions to all (777) when a FUS is done. This way all the permissions are always correct even if the app changes them (like addressbook). You just have to remember to set the setuid bit so the script is run as root.

Now, I don't have WinSwitch (I got a friend to write a little app that handles it), but I believe it will handle this just fine.



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: iSean on Dec 05, '04 10:25:12AM

For those that have a .Mac membership, an easy way to to share an address book (iCal and Safari as well) among multiple users is to use iSync. This works well if the multiple users are actually a single person (or multiple peoople with the same .Mac info). For example, I have a home account and a school account (I teach) on my PowerBook. I've entered my .Mac info into the .Mac preference pane for each user and registered both 'computers' (users) using different names for identification purposes within iSync. Now, when I switch users, one of the first things that happens is iSync runs, giving me a current calendar, address book, and safari bookmarks. Of course, if there are true multiple users with different .Mac info, this will not work. Just a suggestion.



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Use a disk image to share one Address Book
Authored by: mclbruce on Dec 05, '04 12:10:37PM

It looks like you could use a disk image instead of a seperate volume for this. I see in "get info" there is a checkmark for "ignore ownership" in a disk image. You could put the disk image file in each user's startup items so that it would always be present.



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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: altimac on Dec 06, '04 12:06:40PM

Or simply use OD4Contact (http://www.objective-decision.com) (OK not free... but does much more stuff than just an AddressBook) that allows AddressBook sharing using RendezVous !
any change from one of the AddressBook is automagically reported to all clients :)



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BEWARE! - Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: anastas on Jun 02, '06 02:06:07PM
I tried something like this recently and I almost lost my entire address book (except for a month old backup that I had done previously).

I always wondered what would happen if two people were trying to write to the same file (without permissions) at the same time? That didn't exactly happen to me, but something similar happened. One day my local network connection got really slow and Address Book was taking forever to load so I forced quite it. BTW, this was only a couple weeks after setting up address book with a symbolic link as described in this hint to a networked computer. When I tried to reopen it everything was gone, not even the mac default address entries.

If you are going to attempt to implement this symbolic link (synch alternative) I would highly recommend to follow the backup suggestions described in this mac discussion that I posted, or you may lose all your contacts...

--> http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2336427#2336427

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Share one Address Book among multiple users
Authored by: matteoS on May 11, '07 03:47:00AM

it works perfectly, thanks a lot!



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