Sharing an address book over a local network - is .Mac required?

We have a smal Mac ethernet network of 4 or five macs all running OSX 10.3 or above and all with Administrator access. Each mac is used by one member of staff only. One member of staff maintains our client/supplier contacts database as an Excel worksheet on one of the macs, for mail merging with Word, marketing mail shots and other correspondence etc.
Other staff on the network need access to those up-to-date contacts on a daily basis and it is a pain accessing the Excel file all the time accross the network. I have my own pesonal .Mac membership account and I have successfully experimented with exporting the Excel file as a formatted text file (.txt) and importing the relevant fields from the file into Address Book. I intend empowering the 'contacts maintainer' to import the Excel contacts into her macs address book at periodic intervals....
Based on this scenario, my questions are as follows:
a) Can other staff access/share her address book contacts over the network in their local copy of Address Book without a .Mac account?
b) If she is set up with a .Mac account on her Mac...
i) I can subscribe to her address book through my copy of Address Book as I have a .Mac account already - how will this display in my Address Book (Will it automatically creat a new Group?)
ii) Do other staff have to have individual .Mac accounts in order to subscribe to her Address Book contacts (and do they need the full .Mac Membership) – Could they not simply enter her .Mac member details in their macs System Prefs>.Mac>Account and then synchronise Contacts (and possibly iCal Calendars) as this is all they would require it for?
c) Is there a simpler way to achieve all this at minimal cost?
d) Is Directory Access>Contacts involved in a possible alternative solution or am I 'barking up the wrong tree'?
Would appreciate some help with this ASAP!
DMC

Hi Dozza,
The good news is YES, sharing an Address Book group(s) is easily done without .Mac
Since you are on an ethernet network, all you need to do is:
1. Enable Sharing thru System Preferences from your "main" computer you wish to transfer data from/with.
2. Drag your AB group(s) or individual cards to the desktop of your main computer - the one you have all the info in... (the cards will convert to vCards automatically.
3. Place those groups or cards in your Drop Box folder which is: Hard Drive>Users>your "Home" folder>Public>Drop Box
4. All networked computers will be able to access your Drop Box folder even if you do not want other info shared.
Of course .Mac is pretty darn handy too!
Good Luck
John

Similar Messages

  • Share Address Book Over Network

    I have 8 Imacs on my network. I would like to link all address books to one main one on the network. Is this possible?

    Hi Dozza,
    The good news is YES, sharing an Address Book group(s) is easily done without .Mac
    Since you are on an ethernet network, all you need to do is:
    1. Enable Sharing thru System Preferences from your "main" computer you wish to transfer data from/with.
    2. Drag your AB group(s) or individual cards to the desktop of your main computer - the one you have all the info in... (the cards will convert to vCards automatically.
    3. Place those groups or cards in your Drop Box folder which is: Hard Drive>Users>your "Home" folder>Public>Drop Box
    4. All networked computers will be able to access your Drop Box folder even if you do not want other info shared.
    Of course .Mac is pretty darn handy too!
    Good Luck
    John

  • Problems with sharing an Address Book via .Mac

    I am trying to share an address book for my company.
    The address book is on a Mac mini, running it's own .mac account, and there are three .mac users trying to access it.
    There are over 5,500 entries and the address book size is around 12MB.
    We can access the database via logging into the mini's .mac account but it is slow and only shows a few fields.
    Ideally we want to share the address book so everyone can see, add and edit it in their own address book. When we set it up this way though within 30 minutes we have all kinds of erroneous entries with no name and some strange groups established.
    Is address book capable of sharing that size of a database?
    Is there any other way to do this?
    Thanks!

    Hi Dozza,
    The good news is YES, sharing an Address Book group(s) is easily done without .Mac
    Since you are on an ethernet network, all you need to do is:
    1. Enable Sharing thru System Preferences from your "main" computer you wish to transfer data from/with.
    2. Drag your AB group(s) or individual cards to the desktop of your main computer - the one you have all the info in... (the cards will convert to vCards automatically.
    3. Place those groups or cards in your Drop Box folder which is: Hard Drive>Users>your "Home" folder>Public>Drop Box
    4. All networked computers will be able to access your Drop Box folder even if you do not want other info shared.
    Of course .Mac is pretty darn handy too!
    Good Luck
    John

  • Unable to share files over the local network, OS X Lion

    About two weeks ago, my coworker and I realized that we were no longer able to share files over the local network. We have not made any changes to our preference settings. We are able to access FileMaker Pro databases files located on another computer in our office via the network, but we are unable to access any other files by trying to login to the computer remotely. We also have internet access. I am able to login to each of our work computers form home, but not from the office. I'm am not sure what has changed, but it is important that we have the ability to share files at work. Can you give me directions on how to fix our problem. Thanks!
    Debbie Roberts
    Univesrity of Texas at Austin

    I had this problem when I first setup my Mac. One thing I know is that File Sharing in System Preferences doesn't necessarily need to be on, because iTunes does all of the networking itself.
    I know that you've checked and checked again on the firewall, but what I did was turn the firewall on. In the list of ALLOW, there should be a line that is labeled iTunes Music Sharing. Check it. It was the magic link, and all of my iTunes libraries on the three computers in the house (two Windows, one my Mac) could "see" each other.
    Turning on the firewall might seem strange, but it worked for me.
    I hope this helps.
    MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.9)

  • IMac accounts sharing an Address Book, without a dot-mac account?

    Two Administrator accounts on one iMac, having a single Address Book in common? (Only open in one account at a time is no problem.) In this helpful 3/6/06 post, Paul Wayne addressed this issue. He said:
    The easest way to do this is by move /Users -> user_name -> Library -> Application Support -> Address Book folder in the the /Users/Shared/ folder
    Then make an alias by dragging the newly moved folder from /Users/Shared to the each of the user's /Users -> user_name -> Library -> Application Support while holding down the option command key.
    This made sense to me. As a new convert to Tiger from System 8.6, I'm not going to try anything too adventurous. Having Address Book in both Administrator accounts open a file in
    /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Address Book/
    by way of an alias in each
    /Users/UserName/Library/Application Support/Address Book/
    So I reset permissions to enable both of the administrator accounts (Alice and Bob) in question to read and write to subdirectories in the /Users/Shared/ folder and did as Paul suggested.
    No go. Alice now opens her address book, located in
    /Users/Shared/Library/Application Support/Address Book/
    But Bob still opens his own address book, notwithstanding an alias for "Address Book" pointing to the folder in Shared at
    /Users/Bob/Library/Application Support/Address Book/
    I tried removing the folder alias and replacing it with Bob's original "Address Book" folder, then making aliases for each of the files in the Shared "Address Book" folder and putting them in Bob's "Address Book" folder.
    But when Bob opens AddressBook, he still sees his original Address Book. Surprisingly (to me), Bob's "Address Book" folder now has only the aliases for the files visible. So either the actual data files are invisible in "Address Book", or the program is calling them from some other location.
    This doesn't seem like it should be an unusual desire--two separate accounts on one machine sharing a single address book. Doesn't seem that it should be a tough problem, either--Paul's solution ought to have worked.
    If I start up Terminal and use Unix to "ls -al" in the folders in question, will that show that I've induced the Mac to create invisible files or aliases that are trumping my clumsy efforts?
    Intel Core Duo iMac   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

    Hi Dozza,
    The good news is YES, sharing an Address Book group(s) is easily done without .Mac
    Since you are on an ethernet network, all you need to do is:
    1. Enable Sharing thru System Preferences from your "main" computer you wish to transfer data from/with.
    2. Drag your AB group(s) or individual cards to the desktop of your main computer - the one you have all the info in... (the cards will convert to vCards automatically.
    3. Place those groups or cards in your Drop Box folder which is: Hard Drive>Users>your "Home" folder>Public>Drop Box
    4. All networked computers will be able to access your Drop Box folder even if you do not want other info shared.
    Of course .Mac is pretty darn handy too!
    Good Luck
    John

  • Address Book Sync running slow parallels and mac (iCloud)

    Briefly, every time that "address book sync" becomes active on the Mac side, the computer on both the Mac and the Windows side becomes incredibly slow, almost usable. If I disable the "address book sync" through the activity monitor (force quit), the computer on both the Mac and Windows side restores to normal speed. I have 4 CPU's on this MAc book pro and i have configured parallels to 2 for the Mac side and 2 for the Windows side. I have also allocated 2GB of memory to the Windows 7 side which is within the recommended range of 512MB to 4GB (Maximum memory is 16BG).
    I have also noticed in "activity monitor" that the process name "prl_vm_app" can run as high as 200% of cpu usage and vary anywhere from its current level whilst writing this email of 5% upwards. This does not however seem to affect the speed of the computer and again this is being caused by "address book sync". For information I am running Outlook on the windows side and using "contacts" and this is also being replicated on the mac side in "contacts". Whenever I update or enter a new contact in the windows side (Contacts in outlook) then address book sync starts shortly after on the Mac side and the computer slows considerably.
    I have iCloud working on the mac side and windows side syncing my contacts calendar etc.
    Does anyone have any suggestions?

    I have the same problem too. My iphone is not syncing with my addressbook on the mac, no matter what I try, it is very very frustrating!!

  • Importing .wab file into address book or anywhere else on my mac

    Hello all,
    I'm trying to import a Windows .wab file into Address Book (or anywhere else on my Mac for that matter) but can't find a way to make the two like eachother.
    I got the file from someone else and do not have a Windows computer to use in the process.
    Any suggestion would be most welcome!

    Unfortunately those files are in a format unknown to any Mac application. What you may try is this utility but I do not know that it will convert only the .wab file, but it's supposed to be able to convert Outlook data to an OS X readable format.
    In the future be aware that Outlook data files are incompatible with OS X. Have your Windows friends export their data files in a readable format such as Comma or Tab delimited text files.

  • Troubleshooting Address Book issues using Palm Desktop for Mac (v. 4.2.1) and a T3?

    Can someone please make suggestions which would correct the following issues?
    1) When printing an Address Book from my Mac, the information in the "title" field prints twice. (I have checked my Preferences settings & reviewed how I have entered the information, etc. and everything is in order; also, an Address CARD DOES print correctly --- and --- after syncing to my T3 and then to my husband's PC, an Address Book prints correctly from the PC.)
    2) After I have synced the Address Book from my Mac to my T3, the "zip code" entries appear BEFORE the "city" entries on the T3. (The zip codes appear correctly on my Mac and print out correctly.)
    3) After I have synced the Address Book from my Mac to my T3, the "contacts" all appear in BLACK on my T3. Is there any way to show the different "contact categories" in COLOR on the T3 as they were originally entered in my Palm Desktop for Mac?
    Post relates to: Tungsten T3

    I Use Windows And Cant Help Sorry
    -------------- Original message --------------
    Answer Request
    Dear joeweather45,
    HAR asked a question that matches your expertise. Please respond to this question by directly replying to this email or by clicking the link below.
    Question Subject: Troubleshooting Address Book issues using Palm Desktop for Mac (v. 4.2.1) and a T3?
    Question Details: Can someone please make suggestions which would correct the following issues?
    1) When printing an Address Book from my Mac, the information in the 'title' field prints twice. (I have checked my Preferences settings & reviewed how I have entered the information, etc. and everything is in order; also, an Address CARD DOES print correctly --- and --- after syncing to my T3 and then to my husband's PC, an Address Book prints correctly from the PC.)
    2) After I have synced the Address Book from my Mac to my T3, the 'zip code' entries appear BEFORE the 'city' entries on the T3. (The zip codes appear correctly on my Mac and print out correctly.)
    3) After I have synced the Address Book from my Mac to my T3, the 'contacts' all appear in BLACK on my T3. Is there any way to show the different 'contact categories' in COLOR on the T3 as they were originally entered in my Palm Desktop for Mac?
    Device Name: Tungsten T3
    Desktop Computer Operating System: Mac OS 10.3.x
    Desktop computer brand and model number: Mac PowerBook G4
    Desktop Personal Information Manager: Palm Desktop 4.2.1 Mac
    How is your device connected to your computer: USB
    Type of help question: Troubleshooting
    Your expertise is valued. Thanks in advance for your response!
    Need more information before responding to this question? Send a Request for Clarification to the question asker, entering any necessary details in the body of the email.
    Unable to answer this question? Click one of the links below and enter any necessary details in the body of the email. The reason and details you enter will be sent to the question asker.
    Busy | Inappropriate | Answered | Other
    Thank you for taking the time to send this notification. Your participation is valued and we look forward to your continued involvement.
    Sincerely,
    The palmOne Help Forums Team

  • I need to synch my address book from my iPad to my mac?  Help please

    Hello,
    I need to synch my address book from my ipad to my mac.  for some reason they are not aligned and I have contacts in my ipad that are not in my mac address book.  Cab someone pelase help me.  It will not do it through itunes.  Is there another way?

    Do you have your iPad set to sync? Plug your iPad into you computer then launch iTunes, click on your iPad in the left window then click the info tab, check to make sure the tab is set to sync with your address book. 

  • I'm sure there is an easy answer out there somewhere - How do I import an address book from Windows Live to my Mac?

    I'm sure there is an easy answer out there somewhere - Can anybody tell me how do I import an address book from Windows Live to my Mac?
    Thanks

    http://www.freeemailtutorials.com/windowsLiveMail/addressBooksAndContacts/export Contacts.htm
    Explains how to make a vCard from Windows Live.  Apple's Addressbook supports this format.

  • Suddenly ICal & Address Book stopped syncing with Outlook for Mac

    2 days ago, ICal and Address Book stopped syncing with Outlook for Mac 2011.  I still have full functionality of Email in Outlook.
    What is wrong and how can I fix it?

    Any solution here yet? I have the same issue. After upgrading to Yosemite Outlook for mac kept requiring me to "rebuild identity database"
    I did this many times so there were many new identities.
    Finally I researched and found out that after the Yosemite update outlook would rebuild identity and once you do that there is a mismatch of your email account in outlook which just needs to be deleted and re-added to fix.
    Now since then my outlook contacts and apple address book do not speak to each other.
    If I make a new contact on my iphone and sync with my mac it will appear in apple address book.
    If I make a new contact in outlook it will not appear on the iPhone.
    So the phone is communicating and syncing with apple address book but wherever the apple address book goes to find the outlook contacts it must be using one of the older "identities"
    Also now when I am in outlook and go from email to contacts it takes about 20 seconds to open the 5,300 contacts and it used to be instant.
    Is there a way to view where outlook is getting the data? When I go into Outlook Preferences, Sync Services, "On My Computer:" is the one that is chosen so that should be good.
    Any help?

  • File sharing and music sharing in iTunes not working on local network

    Hi Folks
    I am now going to make a topic of my own this time. Here is how it doesn´t work:
    I have a MBP with Mac OS 10.5.4 connected via Airport to my local network. The switch is a zyXel 2602HW-D1A. On my network there is an iMac Flat Panel 800 mHz and an even older iMac bondiblue rev. A. Both of the old ones are running (smoothly) on Panther. The two old ones are connected via ethernetports (wired) on the zyXel-switch. I also have an Apple TV connected wireless to the switch. There is also two printers connected to the network.
    Until recently, don´t know exactly when, everything has worked just fine. The two old macs showing up perfectly in the sidebar of a Finder window. I could also connect to them via the command K. Musicsharing in iTunes also worked very well. But now it is impossible for my MBP to connect to the other Macs. They show up rarely in the sidepane af the Finder window, but when i try to make a connection it is impossible. It just turns the little wheel for a short while and then it says connecting failed. Also the command K command doesn´t work. The other way round is no problem. The two old ones connect perfectly together and to the MBP. Musicsharing is also lost FROM the MBP. There is absolutely no problems in the connection to the Apple TV from the MBP as well. All three Macs connect perfectly to the internet. I can also print from the MBP. AND it strangely connects perfectly to all PCs on my job-network, it is a PC only, LAN.
    So far i have tried almost any combination of turning on and off firewall, allow only special sharing etc. For now the firewall is set allow everything to connect (and it has always been that way) Network settings has also been toggled in any way they can. I have done all three cron jobs and repaired permissions a few times. The zyXel switch has also been reset and restarted.
    I also have a strange minor problem: I can´t open log via the show log button in the advanced pane of firewall settings. There just nothing happening when i click the button. I also had another problem in turning on Airport the other day. I toggled on and off a few settings (Appletalk on and off did the trick) and then it suddenly worked.
    I have a strange feeling of something corrupt on my MBP. Or is it just that networking on Leopard is a bit unstable??
    I would appreciate some help her. I am sure that the problem lies within the MBP, or what do you think?
    Cincerely
    Mads

    Thanks - the weekend was very pleasant indeed!
    I agree that something seems to awry in the Leopard MBP. The question is "what". The symptoms now are:
    1) iTunes music sharing from MBP is broken
    2) Connecting to Panther Mac via AFP is broken (although one Mac can be connected via IP address)
    3) Machine works well on a Windows network
    Based on all of this, I would guess that there is a problem in the "Bonjour" networking of the MBP. You could try:
    1. Using a different account to see if it is local to your user id.
    2. Failing that, removing your com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist and com.apple.AppleShareClient.plist files from /Library/Preferences
    Outside of that, I would have to do some more digging.

  • How to transfer PC's address book over to my new Mac's address book?

    My first Mac arrives Monday -- a Mac Mini. I can't figure out how to transfer my Window ME's Outlook Express address book on my PC over to my new Mac's Mail address book. The two computers will not be networked together. Thanks for any help on this.

    You'll need to export it out of Outlook Express to a Comma Separated Vars (CSV), a Tab-Delimited text file, or as vCards. You can then import any of those using the Import… command in Address Book. I don't know what custom fields OE supports, some may not import.

  • How to configure Growl notifications for File Sharing and Address Book...

    Heya,
    So my team and I constantly add new contacts to Address Book and drop files via File Sharing and I would love a way to push growl notifications to people's computers when these actions occur. Or even send emails. Does anyone know how I could accomplish this? If so, can you reference a tutorial or guide of some sort? Thanks!

    The export function from iCloud creates one single .vcf file with all the addresses in it. If you click on it on the desktop, it starts displaying each and every address as a separate vCard. However, "Tools/Import...Address Books...vCard file" doesn't do anything.

  • Sharing multiple address books in 10.7 Lion

    I have 3 distinct groups that are accessing my server. Each requires it's own unique shared address book. I'm at a loss for setting this up in Lion. I had a (sloppy I think) solution for this under Snow Leopard server involving a shared user account via Workgroup Manager. Hoping there's a cleaner solution and something that's Lion friendly?

    It may have....but this is the way that I've gone with previous versions and it works perfectly. Each user a/c also ends up, by default I think, with a calendar but it's not so easily shared. Be aware that the settings for getting the group calendars into iPhone and Mac iCal are not necessarily trivial. In the past there were problems where after having pointed users iCal to the server iCal happily set up the user calendar but then refused to have anything to do with the group calendar - failing because it felt that you already had a connection to that server.
    The workaround was to modify the default user calendar settings after they are created to point to the shared calendar and then set up another account which defaulted to the user. If you search you'll find the (somewhat complex) URLs for this.
    The groups URL looks like this in iCal Mac
    /principals/__uids__/wiki-groupname/
    And the individual URL looks like this in iCal Mac
    /principals/__uids__/08893585-6BDD-4E82-94C8-A4F53A14A3A2/
    With the long number being auto generated as the GUID for that user,
    They are slightly different in iCal for iPhone -;)
    /principals/wikis/groupname
    /principals/users/username
    Let us know how you go.

Maybe you are looking for

  • Mac :: Firefox :: CSS border issue

    Can someone with Firefox on a Mac check this page and see if you can tell why in the "products" boxes ( there are 3 ) .. the bottom border is missing on only 2 of them. I believe the 3rd box down renders the border. If I delete a paragraph from the 1

  • Is my ipad wi-fi, gsm or cmda

    Hi guys im am having troubles identifying if my ipad (the newest version with wi-fi) is the wi-fi version, the gsm or cdma version. P.s my model number is: A1460

  • How to post stock and what transaction codes

    Hi gurus If I created new material how can I post stock in to the material to process. Ex:MMBE for stock checking. But what is the t -code to enter some stock at materila. also how what other transaction I can for stock posting at various scenarios.(

  • Invoice status "REJECTED"

    Hi GURUS, Please aid me here, What causes invoices to be rejected and what tables to check why the invoices was rejected? Thank you. Tru.

  • JSP & SQL - Holding multiple values

    Hi, I know this is not an ORACLE forum but maybe you can help. I am developing an e commerce site for a cruise ship company as part of a project. In my database I have a table called cruisebookings, which has: create table cruisebooking ( cruise_id n