[littlegreenspud]

Hi,
I am trying to set up my G4 for multiple users (myself, my wife and children).

I have one email account with multiple addresses, ([email protected], [email protected] etc all accessed from the same account), and calendars that we all share.

I would like all users to have access to thier email and the same calanders. The only way I can currently aheive this is to only log in as one user and share this log in with everybody.

There must be a way to use multiple users!

Thanks

[mitchell_pgh]

It's rather easy...

launch Mail.app from each account and configure...

follow this link so that you can share calendars.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...30301162134697

[Brass]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
It's rather easy...

launch Mail.app from each account and configure...

Nope, that will allow you to download mail from the same account, but then the other person users will not be able to download it or see it!

You could of course always set Mail to not delete mail on the server, but then each message will have to be downloaded several times - rather inefficient.

There is no good way to share email accounts across Mac OS X accounts that I know of.

Similarly for Address Book and other standard apps that should be sharable.

[barbarian]

I have one email account with multiple addresses, ([email protected], [email protected] etc all accessed from the same account), and calendars that we all share.

Re Mail

1. If you care about having all the same incoming mail but don't care if the outgoing mail is the same you can set Mail to only remove items from the server after one week. As long as you both check in regularly all your incoming mail will be synced. Your outgoing mail will remain separate. The one nice thing about this setup is that you will each see unread messages properly. You can do with

2. If you want to have exactly the same information for both users you can set up mail so that the mail folder lives on the Shared user's directory. This way you will both have exactly the same database. The problem with this setup is that you have to be careful to close mail before switching or you will run into problems.

--
re calendars, itunes data, and ical try the link mentioned above:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article....030301162134697

--
note you can do the same thing with iphoto, but iphoto seems to get bogged down with permissions problems if more than one user is inputting data.

--
I believe that with fast user switching this is going to be a big problem. App iapps should have a simple "share library with other users on this machine" option.

[Developer]

Why do you want to access your wife's mail from your account? Why does your wife acces your mail from her account?
Set up mail for your e-mail on your account, and for her e-mail on her account. Period. That's how it's supposed to be.

If you need to look up her mail in the rare case you can fast user switch to her account.

[littlegreenspud]

Thanks for all the help.

Developer, you have missed the point, we have one email login which gets the mail and mail.app sorts it into the different mailboxes. To do as you say I would need a further three email accounts...

Barbarian, good idea re erase after one week, now if I could only get everyone to check their mail regularly!

I have tried the symbolic link thing but run into problems with permissions, I am still working on this issue.

Thanks again.

[- - e r i k - -]

Keep separate mail accounts. And USE IMAP!

[hudson1]

What your trying to do with your e-mail is no different than having one e-mail account and multiple computers. The good news is that this is very achievable. I have my mail on two computers and it's perfectly synced.

The first thing to consider, though, is that POP mail is really only designed to be used on one client. That's not to say that it has to be that way but the workarounds are mostly non-ideal hacks.

On the other hand, IMAP is ideally suited for what you're trying to do. In case you're not familiar, think of IMAP as combining the best features of webmail and regular POP mail accessed with a mail client.

Check to see if your ISP supports IMAP. If they don't then consider switching to an e-mail provider that does support IMAP. Some are free, too, such as fastmail.fm. Hope this helps.

[RayX]

Personally, I'd probably recommend trying to get separate e-mail accounts. A lot of ISPs offer them these days. (for family use etc)

Sharing a POP account with aliases amongst multiple user logins is more trouble than it's worth from my experience.

[vsurfer]

Wife and kids on iMac DV 400 with fast user switching = great
Kinds don't have email yet, but wife has own .mac account and that works out fine too. Except the egregious expense.

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Keep separate mail accounts. And USE IMAP!

There arent't a lot of ISPs that support IMAP.

[hudson1]

Originally posted by littlegreenspud:
I would like all users to have access to thier email and the same calanders. The only way I can currently aheive this is to only log in as one user and share this log in with everybody.

There must be a way to use multiple users!

Thanks

On further review, it's not obvious why you want multiple user accounts at all on your Mac. If you could share what you're thinking on that question then I think some possibly better ideas can be found for your e-mail dilemma.

As for the above post about not many ISPs supporting the IMAP protocol, you don't need your ISP to provide your email in the first place. Most "email providers" offer a much better email service than do most ISPs. The other advantage of going with an email provider is that you can change ISPs without changing your email address.