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Share Address Book between user accounts

GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
Original poster
May 16, 2008
44,560
957
I'm surprised I wasn't able to find much at all on this by searching this forum or the web. Maybe I'm looking for the wrong thing. Anyway, here goes:

I want to share an Address Book between different user accounts on the same Mac, without resorting to using MobileMe or another sync tool that requires internet access to function. I had hoped to set it up where the Address Book is in the Shared folder and accessed by each user, but that doesn't appear to be possible. It's surprising that this isn't a natural function in native Mac OS X.

I've also tried exporting an Address Book Archive to the Shared folder. It shows on my account to be 1.6MB. When I log in as another user, it shows to be Zero KB, even after changing permissions, and importing into Address Book does nothing.

Any ideas?
 
Used to work

When I first set up multiple user accounts on 10.5, this seemed to work out of the box. After upgrading to 10.6, it completely stopped working on my second account. I'm trying to figure it out right now...
 
I think it would work if you sync the address book in both accounts to one GMail account. You can turn this on in the Address Book.
 
Weaselboy said:
I think it would work if you sync the address book in both accounts to one GMail account. You can turn this on in the Address Book.
Click to expand...
Did you read my post?
GGJstudios said:
...I want to share an Address Book between different user accounts on the same Mac, without resorting to using MobileMe or another sync tool that requires internet access to function....
Click to expand...
 
JNB said:
Duh.

I only read the instructions, not the description. :eek:

EDIT: Think this would work for you? Kind of a (minor) hack, but…
Click to expand...

I found that post when I searched, but decided not to try it for several reasons:
  • The post is 5 years old, so I'm not sure it would work the same way on current versions.
  • The statement that it hadn't been tested concerned me.
  • I'm not crazy about the idea of setting up a partition just for this.
  • I would think the "Ignore Permissions" setting would be a security issue.

Again, with Apple promoting ease of use and information sharing between Mac users (iTunes Home Sharing, iChat, etc.), it seems bizarre to me that such a basic need isn't a native function in Mac OS X.
 
Hi guys,

I just found this online:-

http://www.addressbookserver.com

. . . . though not much good for me as I'm a standalone iMac user and really would like to be able to share one Address Book between three accounts (Dad/Mum/Daughter) on the family machine.

I'm stunned that after much searching online, there seems to be no way to do this. No doubt another way for Apple (etc) to make money by forcing their loyal users to buy into a MobileMe account.

Cheers,
Steve

Anyone else found a solution yet?
 
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