I needed to share a big address book (which I maintain) that our whole company uses to send email to staff at different schools. There are only 12 users here, so it isn't much of a hassle for me. It's cheaper than GroupWise or MS Exchange for a small non-profit like us! Hopefully this will be useful to someone else too.
We're using Beonex email using IMAP. It may work with POP, I didn�t try it...but the concept is to replace their address book .mab file with yours. First, create a folder for each user on your server. When you create the user's profile and it asks where you want their 'profile' folder and stuff stored (ie 'Local directory'), point to their user folder on your server. You'll find the .mab file(s) inside the folder Beonex assigns and places within your network user folder. Then open the user�s email program and create a new (blank) address book, and give it the same name as the one you�re sharing. The tricky part is you have to make sure the name that Beonex gives to the address book when it�s created (it won�t match what you named it) matches the Beonex name of the one you�re sharing, because they�re named in chronological order as they�re created i.e. abook1.mab, abook2.mab, etc. Let�s say the address book you want to share was the first one you created in your email client. You named it �Principals� but Beonex would have named it abook1.mab. And if a user had already created one address book of their own, it would also be called abook1.mab. So, you have to export their address book, close Beonex and make sure it�s deleted from their user folder on your server. Then re-open Beonex and create a new address book in it�s place, which Beonex would name abook1. Now you can replace their abook1 with your abook1, and voila, they have all the info you have. Then import their address book back in (if you exported one) so they won't scream. In the future when you update your addresses, just go into each user folder and replace their abook1 file with your updated abook1 file. Of course, if the user didn�t create any address books originally, you don't have to worry about exporting and whatnot, just create the blank �shared� address book and replace their abook1 with your abook1. Hope that made some kind of sense, anyway. I�m no programmer, so maybe there�s an easier way...if there is, please let me know. cheers, Dawn Sent by Go2net Mail!
