[emil]

In our (small) office, we have very basic server needs - filesharing. Even though it's probably overkill, we managed to get a used G4 system for this sole purpose. It has Panther server installed on it, with a whopping three (3) users on it, and we connect via AFP.

Anyway, one thing I've read a bit about that I'm interested in is the possibility of using Address Book in conjunction with LDAP to have a centralized address book. Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong thing, but what I'd ideally like is for all users to be able to use Address Book.app to view / edit / add / delete users from the same centralized address book. Maybe LDAP would be useful, maybe it's just a matter of fancy aliasing. Can anyone offer some suggestions?

[pat++]

I'm not sure Address book will allow you to edit/add/remove contacts from the LDAP server. LDAP servers are usually read-only for standard users, and an admin is updating the info on the server when a new person needs to be added (with specialized tools).
But it's definitely a good idea, if you want to share contact information of all the people working in the company to use an LDAP server...

btw, you can have a look a the ldapadd man page for more info...

[Thinine]

Integrating Address Book with an LDAP server is quite easy, but like it's been said, you won't be able to edit stuff on the LDAP server with Address Book. However, since Mail.app reads the Address Book database, you'll have access to the LDAP server's addresses when writing messages. This is very cool.

[emil]

well, here's the next problem. i have our current database as a spreadsheet, which can obviously be output to CSV, Tab Delimited, or something else that can be readily imported... but.. is there an easy way to pull that data in:?

[emil]

i should make it clear that our company is, like i said, really small - 3 people, total. we don't need to share eachother's contact info.. the database i'm trying to create is to keep track of our clients, which is obviously a much larger database.