Sharing addressbook leads to interesting problem

[edalzell]

My wife and I each have different accounts, but we share the addressbook. Therefore we don't have a 'Me' card.

This means we can't assign the 'Me' card, like in the instructions. My hope would be that we could each have an unofficial 'me' card, at least according to SpamSieve.

Is that clear?

[Michael Tsai]

My wife and I each have different accounts, but we share the addressbook. Therefore we don't have a 'Me' card.

Presumably you mean different mail accounts, but the same Mac OS X account?

This means we can't assign the 'Me' card, like in the instructions. My hope would be that we could each have an unofficial 'me' card, at least according to SpamSieve.

I suggest creating a card to use as the (official) Me card and adding both your addresses to it.

[edalzell]

Presumably you mean different mail accounts, but the same Mac OS X account?

Nope, different Mac OS X account.

I suggest creating a card to use as the (official) Me card and adding both your addresses to it.

Ya, the problem with that is that when I send an email, it comes out as "Me Card Name" (like The Dalzells, or whatever I put as the name).

What I want is the ability to have two Me cards.

[Michael Tsai]

Nope, different Mac OS X account.

Then how do you share the address book?

[edalzell]

Then how do you share the address book?

ln -s the addressbook data file and put the real one in the shared folder.

[Michael Tsai]

ln -s the addressbook data file and put the real one in the shared folder.

I think you’re going outside the bounds of the way Address Book is designed to be used. The symlink may work fine, or it may lead to data corruption. Apple intended there to be one address book per OS X account, and so that’s what SpamSieve is designed to support.

The Me card is not essential to using SpamSieve. The only thing you lose by not having one is the Exclude my addresses feature for catching spams that were sent using your own address.

Ya, the problem with that is that when I send an email, it comes out as "Me Card Name" (like The Dalzells, or whatever I put as the name).

Are you sure that this affects the way the message is received by other Macs? I would expect that to be controlled by the “Full Name” that you enter in Mail’s Accounts preferences.

[edalzell]

I think you’re going outside the bounds of the way Address Book is designed to be used. The symlink may work fine, or it may lead to data corruption. Apple intended there to be one address book per OS X account, and so that’s what SpamSieve is designed to support.

Not my fault Apple didn't think about the usage of a shared machine. How else is one family supposed to share an addressbook? Apple *should* have made it a fully functional LDAP server so that this kind of hack isn't necessary.

[Michael Tsai]

Not my fault Apple didn't think about the usage of a shared machine. How else is one family supposed to share an addressbook?

I agree that Apple should do a better job of supporting that type of scenario. At the same time, if you create an unsupported configuration, you become responsible for the consequences.

Back to your original question about the Me card: I did some tests, and it seems that “The Dalzells” would only only up when sending a message to your wife. It would say “The Dalzells” in the recipient list. Even this could probably be avoided by omitting the name on the Me card. All sent messages will still be “From” whatever name you’ve set in Mail’s preferences.

[edalzell]

Yes, you are right, I should be responsible for any funkiness my unsupported configuration causes.

As for the me card, I will switch to that, thanks for looking in to it.

Thanks