Sharing address books

This article was written for Thunderbird but also applies to the Mozilla Suite.

Your personal address book is normally stored as a file within the profile. This is specifed in the prefs.js file.

user_pref("mail.accountmanager.localfoldersserver", "server2");

user_pref("ldap_2.servers.pab.filename", "abook.mab");

shows that on my system the local folder directory is server2, and the personal address book is abook.mab. Early versions of Thunderbird let you replace the filename with a full pathname to specify the address book was stored on a file share. That would let multiple users and/or machines use it. However, that functionality no longer works and there is no indication that it will ever be restored. You can replace the filename to specify a relative pathname. For example:

user_pref("ldap_2.servers.pab.filename", "test\\abook.mab");

specifies that abook.mab is stored in a test subdirectory in my profile. So you could store it in any subdirectory below the profile. But thats not very usefull.

If you're using Linux you could move abook.mab to another location (such as a file share) and then use a symlink to create a symbolic link to the file. As far as Thunderbird is concerned nothing has changed, the operating system hides the fact that the file is actually stored elsewhere. That works as long as you don't have a copy of abook.mab in the profile. The NTFS file system under Windows 2000 and XP supports an equivalent of a symlink called a junction point. It works fine with Thunderbird, but may be too complex for most users.

Rather than using abook.mab to store the address book on your hard disk, you could use a LDAP server to share the address book. Unfortunately Thunderbird currently doesn't support editing entries on the LDAP server so its most usefull in an environment where an admin maintains a corporate address book.

If you have a IMAP account you might experiment with the SyncKolab extension. It loads all your contacts (from a selected address book) as well as events and todos (from the selected calendar), and synchronizes them with a selected IMAP folder. The main restriction is that you must have a calendar. If you wanted to share the address book with other users you could use a public folder. IMAP supports the concept of public folders, though not every email provider supports them.

Its not clear yet how well SyncKolab works (at this time).

External links

• SyncKolab extension
• Wikipedia article on junctions points
• Mozillazine thread on using junction points
• Junction Link magic - freeware to create junction points
• Junction - freeware to create junction points
• Article on using LDAP for mail contacts
• LDAP address book download bugzilla bug report
• Make LDAP entries editable bugzilla bug report
• Featuretracker on official Mozilla LDAP schema extension