Sharing Address Book w/ Other Users

My girlfriend and I share a mac. We have separate user accounts, separate MobileMe accounts, and we each have an iPhone. However, we would like to use the same address book. For a while I was using some third party software and it worked fine but it would run every time we logged in and bounce around annoyingly in the dock. It also required us to sync the two desktop address books and then dock our phones. This can't be that difficult, right?
I know how we can share contacts through MobileMe, but that's not really what we want. (We want to share a single address book.) Besides, I can't figure out how sharing them in the desktop app is reflected on the phone.
I've also read things about putting the address book on a shared drive and then symlinking our folders to that location, but I'm worried that our "me" vcards would then be confused.
The end goal is for her iPhone's contacts to be updated when I update a contact on my iPhone (and vise versa). Simple enough right? Can somebody please explain how we can make this a reality?
Thanks!

Go to /Users/Shared and make a new EMPTY folder there called Contacts.
Assuming the short usernames of your and your partner's accounts are "matthew" and "lisa", Open Terminal and paste these (paste each group of three lines all at once):
chmod -R +a "matthew allow \
delete,chown,list,search,addfile,addsubdirectory,\
deletechild,file_inherit,directoryinherit" /Users/Shared/Contacts
chmod -R +a "lisa allow \
delete,chown,list,search,addfile,addsubdirectory,\
deletechild,file_inherit,directoryinherit" /Users/Shared/Contacts
Then log in as the user of the account that has the Address Book info you want to share.
Then go to HomeFolder/Library/Application Support. Hold down the option key while dragging the AddressBook folder to /Users/Shared/Contacts.
Verify that the copy worked, and then delete the HomeFolder/Library/Application Support/AddressBook folder from its original location.
Then, command-option-control-drag the AddressBook folder from /Users/Shared/Contacts to its original location in HomeFolder/Library/Application Support. This will create an alias.
Then log in as the other user and repeat the last step.
The above is exactly what I do to share iMovie projects and iTunes and iPhoto libraries between my wife's and my user accounts.

Similar Messages

Can you share iCalander/Address Book with other users and restrict them from seeing certain entries?

I'm doing some research for my boss concerning iCloud. He would like to setup a way to syncronize iCalender and the Address Book between three users but keep his personal information private. For example, he wants to be able to update his calender from his phone about an upcoming meeting/project so that the three computers at work are all updated and see upcoming events. Same goes for the contacts. If he adds a new contact or if I add a new contact, for a client or whoever it may be, he wants it to sync up for everyone. At the same time, if he adds a personal event to iCal such as, "Dinner with the girlfriend" or something irrelevant to work, he doesn't employees to be able to see that. My first idea was to setup an iCloud account but I'm wondering if you can even restrict certain things within an account.
Anyone have any other ideas? They would be greatly appreciated.

iCloud appears to provide no Address Book sharing. You might be able to do this through Google, but it would be likely to be all contacts or none.
iCloud allows you to share calendars privately (editable if you wish) to other iCloud users or publicly (non-editable) to anyone - they would need a CalDAV client to read it, such as iCal or Google Calendars.
You share individual calendars, so private events should be in their own calendar which is not shared.
More on Calendar sharing here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2690

How do I share my Address Book with other users on same computer?

This continues to elude me. I tried Address Book sharing, syncing, etc. but they either didn't work or are way too slow. I just simply want to be able to use the same database for all users on the same computer. I'm really surprised that Apple doesn't offer this functionality.
I read one solution about creating a separate hard drive solution, selecting Ignore Permissions on it and moving the database to that and then setting up symbolic links for each user to point their Address Book database to that database. But this still seems like a major pain.
Is there not something more simple and reliable?
Thank you.

macsense wrote:
This continues to elude me. I tried Address Book sharing, syncing, etc. but they either didn't work or are way too slow. I just simply want to be able to use the same database for all users on the same computer. I'm really surprised that Apple doesn't offer this functionality.
I read one solution about creating a separate hard drive solution, selecting Ignore Permissions on it and moving the database to that and then setting up symbolic links for each user to point their Address Book database to that database. But this still seems like a major pain.
Is there not something more simple and reliable?
No. You don't have to use an external drive and can put it in a folder in /Users/Shared and set inherited ACLs to allow different users to read/write to it as outlined in this [post|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7245381&#7245381]. You'll still need to erase original address book folders and put symbolic links to the shared folder if you do that. there is nothing simpler I'm afraid.

Can I share my address book with other user profiles on my computer?

My wife and I both logon to our iMac with different user accounts. However, we know all the same people and would like to share the contents of the Address Book. How do we go about this so that if I add a person to the address book, that my wife will see it when she gets on with her account?
Thanks.

I realize yours was a suggestion to investigate & not a recommendation, but I wanted to point out some of the method's potential problems in case it was taken as the latter.
Should anyone decide to take the safer option of sharing vCards manually, they can make the procedure easier by creating a shared folder in Users/Shared & an alias of it in some convenient location like the desktop. Then, after creating new contacts they want to share, they need only drag them from the name list into the alias. The other account holder(s) then can drag them from that common folder into their own Address Book.
A variation of this idea is to create individual folders in each ~/Public/ folder (changing permissions as appropriate), or to use the Drop Box folder to make the vCard available to other user(s). This would reduce the confusion between "incoming" & "outgoing" vCards. I haven't tried it, but it might also be possible to automate the importing or at least notification for the receiving user with folder action scripts.

How do I share cards in my address book with other users on my iMac?

I setup our iMac so me and my wife login with our own account. The problem, however, is that contacts I add to my address book are not visible when she signs on with her account. How do I go about sharing this info? Come to think of it, how will I let her view the photos that are associated with my account too?
Thanks.

Nevermind.

Adding an Address Book card from a shared address book to a Group

I have an Address Book Sharing Question/Problem. With the .Mac Family Pack, I have multiple .Mac Accounts. I have set up Address Book to share addresses from the individual .Mac accounts and set each to be able to edit the shared addresses. Initially, I was hoping that these would appear in each users Address Book and sync all changes, instead of just appearing as a shared Address Book below the users Address Book. But that does not appear to be the case.
However, my question/problem is that I want to be able to add a card from a shared Address Book (for example from my wife’s Address Book) into a current group in my Address Book (say a family member group). I can drag the card in, but the information is apparently copied as a new card into my Address Book and changes I make are no longer synced with the shared Address Book (my Wife’s Address Book). Is this working correctly? (I know .Mac has been acting up in the last few weeks) If so, there does not appear to be much value in say sharing family, doctor, and friends info from my wife’s address book, as I can not create my own groups or if I do, our contact info is no longer synced. The new cards I copy in are also not visible to the shared Address Book, so we will also have no way of seeing that a card has been changed. Is there anyway to truly share a card or group of contacts between users of separate .Mac accounts so that the contacts can be separated into different groups for each user and card info / changes will remain synced? If this is already supposed to be occurring, any ideas as to a fix?
Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Also, if I drag an entire group from a shared Address Book to my Address Book, it is copied in a blue color, making me think "Cool! It is different from a group that I create (which are white), so it must be shared!" But it is not. Changes to cards in this "copied" group are not synced to the original shared Address Book. So, what does the blue color mean?

Sharing address books (not corporate directory) between organizations

Is it at all possible to share a users PAB or additional address book to other users in another organization. I know that it's possible with the flag db.SharePabContacts=true between organizational units but our organizations have different domain names. It is possible to share / invite calendars between organizations, why not address books?

With the Find iPhone app on each phone, or by logging into your iCloud account on a computer, you can see where each phone is located and which phone it is by the name of the phone. E.g. Bob's phone, Mary's phone, Phone A, Phone B, or however you want them named. Each phone is named uniquely in Settings > General > About > Name
As for syncing that too can be done. In Settings > iCloud you can turn on or off whether that particular phone can sync or not by toggling Contacts On or Off.
As for call forwarding Find My iPhone will still locate the phone(s) by their physical location, not by where the phone is set to forward calls to.
All of the above is done through one Apple ID or iCloud acc't.
Hopefully I've understood your questions correctly.

Sharing Address Book (and groups) With Others

I know there is a way to share address book with others through mac.com, but I'm wondering if there is a way to do it without mac.com ...

Yes, there are quite a few other options. I developed a solution for this called Address Book and Calendar Server (http://www.addressbookserver.com). There seems to be also an option to use Google etc.
PS: I am the developer of AddressBookServer.com and naturally biased towards it.

How do I copy an address book from one user account to another?

How do I copy an address book from one user account to another?

You haven't understood me. Follow these steps:
1. Log in the user where are the files you want to transfer, and open a Finder window.
2. In Finder, select Go menu (on the menu bar) > Go to Folder, and type /Users/Shared. Now you're on Shared folder, so leave that window.
3. Open a new Finder window without closing the old one, go to the folder with the files you want to transfer, and copy them to Shared folder.
4. After copying the files to Shared folder, go to  > Log Out, and log in the other user.
5. Repeat the step 2, and you will get access to the transferred files. Now, you can open them directly from this folder, or you can copy them to a folder on your user folder

Setting Up a Shared Address Book

Hello, and thank you for taking a look at my question.
I concur with the many people on this forum who are amazed how frustratingly difficult it is to setup a shared Address Book. I have a small office network of 4 users (all running the latest Snow Leopard) connected to a Mac Pro running the most current Snow Leopard Server.
This forum did lead me to 2 good articles on the subject:
http://osxupgrade.com/create-a-global-address-book-with-mac-os-x-snow-leopard-se rver/456/
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf= 1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsupport.osxplain.de%2Fcontent%2F4%2F1%2Fde%2Fgruppenkontakte.ht ml&sl=de&tl=en
I followed them carefully and created my new Group in Workgroup Manager which I then populated with the users in my office.
I then tried to configure Address Book at the client's iMac. I couldn't get Address Book to 'see' the server.
There are 2 areas I may have got wrong and I would be very grateful for some advice/guidance please:
On the client Mac, how can I check the fully qualified address of my server to ensure I am entering the correct address in the Address Book Wizard when creating the new account (can I not use the static IP address of the server)?
On the server, I have created, and started, the Address Book Server service. What should I enter in the Authentication > Host Name please? The manual says "It should be a fully qualified domain name matched with a reverse lookup record". How can I check I have got this correct?
Sorry for the obvious questions but it's all new to me.
Many thanks
Chris

On the client Mac, how can I check the fully qualified address of my server to ensure I am entering the correct address in the >Address Book Wizard when creating the new account (can I not use the static IP address of the server)?
Open the Terminal window on your client Mac and type *dig [name of your server]* and check that it returns the IP address of your server. Then type *dig -x [ip address of your server] and check it returns the name of your server e.g. server.domain.com
This will show you what your client Mac thinks you server is.
Do the same on the server and it should match. If not then you may have a problem. Here is an example.
*dig server.bumfodder.com*
; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> server.bumfodder.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 49014
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;server.bumfodder.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
server.bumfodder.com. 37694 IN A 95.130.103.213
;; Query time: 11 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Sep 20 07:46:43 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 54
*dig -x 95.130.103.213*
; <<>> DiG 9.6.0-APPLE-P2 <<>> -x 95.130.103.213
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 25816
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;213.103.130.95.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR
;; ANSWER SECTION:
213.103.130.95.in-addr.arpa. 38400 IN PTR server.bumfodder.com.
;; Query time: 36 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Sep 20 07:47:46 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 79
<div class="jive-quote">On the server, I have created, and started, the Address Book Server service. What should I enter in the Authentication > >Host Name please? The manual says "It should be a fully qualified domain name matched with a reverse lookup record". >How can I check I have got this correct?
In the above example - you would put server.bumfodder.com

Sharing address book with another account on same computer

How do you simply share the Lion 10.7.1 address book with another user account on the same computer?

miniman,
I just double checked on my laptop that I share the music files with.
When I did the steps from the above post, my music showed up just fine.
The other account was blank as I didn't have any music in there anyway.
All I had to do after the steps above was to "Add to Library" under the "File" menu. I then selected the entire "iTunes Music" folder in the shared library and added all the songs to it... Now you would not have to add all the songs if the other account didn't want them all.... So, you could be selective.
Bottom Line.... It does work and then you only have one copy of the "iTunes Music" folder on the one hard drive... No duplicates....
I did NOT have to have the box checked that said "Copy files to iTunes Music folder"..........

Shared Address Books in Outlook 2010

Outlook 2010 Scenario:
I have a group of users that would like share an address book between 5 users.
(Users are all in the sales department.)
One user (Sales Rep A) created an address book and shared out the address book to the 4 users.
Sales Rep A has even given “editor” file permissions to the other users so they can update contact information and has verified that the contacts folder is marked as “Outlook address book”.
When you go click on “Address book” in Outlook – then the Tools menu – Options ….I don’t see any option to add the address book.
(No way to browse)
Although, the other 4 users can see it the address book on the navigation pane, but when you open a new message and click “TO”, they would like to see
it listed under the address book drop down list. (Where you normally would see the GAL listed).
Things I have tried:
Created sharing invitation for other 4 users in group.
Verified properties and made sure the check was in front of “show this folder as an email address book”.
I have created a new profile and still don’t see the address book listed.
One solution I thought of was Public folders, but I thought I read somewhere they were going way…is that true???
We are using a domain.
We are also using WinXP, Outlook 2010, and Exchange 2010.
Please also note we are also running Word 2007, Excel 2007, PPT 2007.
References:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-outlook/windows-7-outlook-2010-cannot-add-contact-folder/0e071a3f-ff23-46f0-8f1e-9f9160fc3f05
http://www.howto-outlook.com/Faq/contactsinaddressbook.htm
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/share-a-contacts-folder-with-others-HA001234174.aspx
http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2002/up020410.htm#adshare
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/outlook/thread/8a7ec965-57a7-4a08-962e-916e358703c0/
Can you assist?
Thanks!

Look in the Addressing, if you go to Tools, you should see all the available address books and in what order that Outlook searches through them. You should be able to add the extra address book there.

Sharing address book contacts

Hello
We run a small network (less than 10 users) and run mail, file & user services off Mac OS X Server 10.4.x. I will probably upgrade to Leopard Server when available.
I need to find a way of sharing address book information amongst our users. This does not mean contact information for users, it means contact information for customers, suppliers, etc.
You would think that this is simple, and perhaps it is, but I cannot find a way of doing it.
I see that in Leopard Server we will have shared calendars, but still no sign of shared address books, that I can see.
I have tried various syncing tools with mixed success. The most promising looked to be Sync Together from Mark/Space but it will not run on Mac OS X Server (at least not unless you leave it logged in as some user).
I looked at Now-up-to-date/Contact but this is often reported as flaky - though I understand they have a new sharing product due some time soon.
Am I missing something? Is there a way of using LDAP server to distribute contact info? The data must be read/write ie capable of being edited in Address Book.
Thanks for any help
Regards
James

SugarCRM or most any other Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package can potentially provide what you want here, though such — even an open-source package — might be viewed as overkill. Few of these are tied into Mail and its address book; you're operating in the CRM environment.
Leopard Server offers [Directory|http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/directory.html], which might well be what you seek. Stick your customers in the directory, in their own groupings. (Assuming Directory offers a hierarchical organization, you could have Customers -> Company -> Contacts, for instance.)
The Directory feature certainly appears to be the next round of the LDAP and Open Directory support in the existing Tiger Server environment. Conceivably, you could load your data into the existing LDAP Open Directory environment, but that might not be (isn't) optimal.
A slightly more involved approach would be to use an RSS feed for your contact info and contact updates, and create and one of the Data Detector action routines that Leopard Mail offers; basically rolling your own distribution system. Load your contacts via RSS, and whenever you connect to your network, the Mail RSS feed and a custom Data Detector could be used to synchronize your address book with the RSS feed.
But yes, Leopard Directory looks to be the best way for now, based on what's been published.

Shared address book!

I have a question about setting up shared address books with Mac OS X, but I have no idea how to solve this. I want to set up an address book that can be accessed by different user accounts on the same Mac or by different Macs in the same network. is there away to set it up under Mac OS Leopard server?! Thanks

Hi Stephen,
Open Directory is part of the advanced configuration. When promoted to Master it serves users, groups, computers and provides an LDAP directory.
I'm not so familiar with the Standard Server configuration. But you can see if Address Book connects with the Directory in use under that configuration.
In Address Book -> Preferences -> LDAP -> + -> fill in the blanks. Call it "LDAP Dir". For a server.example.com put in a search base of
"dc=server, dc=example, dc=com" (no quotes),
Port 389 and
Scope of Subtree.
For Authentication -> Simple,
Username -> [email protected] and your password. Save. Check Active.
Note that for internet access you need to have port 389 open. If inside a LAN it is available to all the direct clients on the internal net.
In Address Book -> Groups -> Directories -> LDAP Dir. Now search for something in the directory. The search will return based on 3 letters or more entered for search. You can click on the icon of an entry and see the vcard data.
BTW - Open Directory is part of Leopard Server. Active Directory is the Windows thing.
Hope this helps,
Harry

Sharing address book

how do i share the same address book between two users on the same mac?

It can be done, but setting it up takes a bit of work. It works flawlessly afterwards.
Step 1: Make a new folder in /Users/Shared. Call it Contacts for the sake of the example here.
Step 2: Go to System Preferences -> Accounts. Unlock the padlock, and click the + button. Choose "new Group" from the drop-down menu. Call it "contactgroup" for the sake of the example here. Add the users to that group to whom you wish to share access to the Address Book contents.
Step 3: Log in to an admin account, and paste all of this into Terminal at the same time:
sudo chmod +a "contactgroup allow delete,chown,list,search,add_file,\
addsubdirectory,delete_child,file_inherit,directoryinherit" \
/Users/Shared/Contacts
Press return, and then enter the admin password when prompted. The above step will ensure that both users can add, remove, and edit contacts without running into "permission denied" errors.
Step 4: Log in as the user who has the Address Book contents you want to share. Navigate to Homefolder -> Library -> Application Support. Hold down the option key while you drag the AddressBook folder from there to /Users/Shared/Contacts. Then move the original AddressBook folder from Homefolder -> Library -> Application Support to the trash.
Step 5: control-option-command-drag the AddressBook folder from /Users/Shared/Contacts back to Homefolder/Library/Application Support. This will create an alias, so that the Address Book application will know where to find the contact info in its new location.
Step 6: Log in as the user with whom you want to share access, and repeat step 5.
That should do it. It works for me for sharing iPhoto and iTunes libraries between my wife's and my user accounts, so it should work too for Address Book.

Sharing Address Book w/ Other Users

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