Sharing the Mail App - PLEASE HELP!
Four people use our computer, we all have our seperate user areas but share a Mail Account, but four different sets of preferences means four mail directories. It's so Painfully messy for us to all have to download everyone else's emails four times.
Surely there must be some way for me to change the mail directory so we can share the mail application.
PLEASE HELP
Andrew
Surely there must be some way for me to change the mail directory so we can share the mail application.
PLEASE HELP
Andrew
Comments
I'll try a few tests and come back a bit later.
1. Logged in as an admin user, go to the /Library folder and create a new folder called SharedMail.
2. In another window, navigate to your home Library folder. Copy the Mail folder from it into the new SharedMail folder.
3. In that same second window, go to your home Library/Preferences folder. Copy the file com.apple.mail.plist into the new SharedMail folder. You can close this window now.
4. If not still there, navigate to the /Library folder again. Select the newly created SharedMail folder and choose Get Info from the file menu. Click the disclosure triangle for Ownership & Permissions. Click the padlock (enter your password if requested) and change both Access menus and the Others menu to Read & Write. Click "Apply to enclosed items" and confirm the dialog.
5. Log out and log in as one of the users you want to share the mail. Quit Mail if you have it set to automatically launch at login. Mail should NOT be running for the following steps.
6. Go to your home Library folder. Delete the Mail folder.
7. Go to your home Library/Preferences folder. Delete the com.apple.mail.plist file.
8. Log out again and log in as the admin user.
9. Open the Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities).
10. Execute the following two commands, replacing "username" with the login name (aka. the "short name") of your current user. You may be asked for a password. If so, enter the admin user's password. Be sure to enter these *exactly* as below.
sudo ln -s /Library/SharedMail/Mail /Users/username/Library/Mail
sudo ln -s /Library/SharedMail/com.apple.mail.plist /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
11. Log out and repeat steps 5 through 10 for each of the users that will share these settings including the admin user.
That should do it!
- Brad
[ 10-19-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
<strong>These instructions will use the Mail folder from your admin user as a base for all users to share. Warning!! This will DELETE the Mail folders for all users except the user you start with. For steps 6 and 7, you should probably just move the files to the trash and not empty it yet so that you can recover them in case the process does not work properly.
1. Logged in as an admin user, go to the /Library folder and create a new folder called SharedMail.
2. In another window, navigate to your home Library folder. Copy the Mail folder from it into the new SharedMail folder.
3. In that same second window, go to your home Library/Preferences folder. Copy the file com.apple.mail.plist into the new SharedMail folder. You can close this window now.
4. If not still there, navigate to the /Library folder again. Select the newly created SharedMail folder and choose Get Info from the file menu. Click the disclosure triangle for Ownership & Permissions. Click the padlock (enter your password if requested) and change both Access menus and the Others menu to Read & Write. Click "Apply to enclosed items" and confirm the dialog.
5. Log out and log in as one of the users you want to share the mail. Quit Mail if you have it set to automatically launch at login. Mail should NOT be running for the following steps.
6. Go to your home Library folder. Delete the Mail folder.
7. Go to your home Library/Preferences folder. Delete the com.apple.mail.plist file.
8. Log out again and log in as the admin user.
9. Open the Terminal (located at /Applications/Utilities).
10. Execute the following two commands, replacing "username" with the login name (aka. the "short name") of your current user. You may be asked for a password. If so, enter the admin user's password. Be sure to enter these *exactly* as below.
sudo ln -s /Library/SharedMail/Mail /Users/username/Library/Mail
sudo ln -s /Library/SharedMail/com.apple.mail.plist /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
11. Log out and repeat steps 5 through 10 for each of the users that will share these settings including the admin user.
That should do it!
- Brad
[ 10-19-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's a rather snazzy trick!! Thankx
Andrew