Sharing Mail Contacts / Calendar

ve

Hi, I have been using Outlook 2003 to manage my Email, Calendar & Contacts, but without forking out for a Windows Server/Exchange Server I would like to be able to share this information between a few Outlook clients.

I understand that this may not be possible, so I am willing to switch over to Thunderbird as long as I don't lose any data in the transition. Have a fairly large address book already. I am not really in a position to spend money on this task, as I'm quite positive that a free (most likely open source) solution exists.

The ideal setup - considering I already have a LAMP server on my intranet, it would be great if I was able to expose my contacts through a web based interface if I needed it away from the office. Failing that even if I was able to use the LAMP server / fileshare server as a place where the contact / caldendar / email data could be stored and shared that would be fantastic.

Y'see I so tired of having to go through several machines on my network trying to find contact information or an old email. Also if I have a email account accessible from many different mail clients on a network, and then a single client pulls new mails, how can I set the system up so, the other clients on the network can pull the new mail also at a later time. i.e. download anything new that the client doesn't know about, as opposed to anything new since the account was last checked.

Is this possible?

Rew

Do you want to share it with your self (IE multiple clients belonging to you) or other people?

aidan_walsh

"5 Open Alternatives to Microsoft Exchange"

ve

Thanks Aidan, having a look at them now

Rew wrote: »

Do you want to share it with your self (IE multiple clients belonging to you) or other people?

I'd like to share it with other people. For example lets say there is a public email address and contact book, and then each person has their own private email and contact book. On a particular client, the client can see everything in public and also what they have in their private, but nobody else's private.

It would be great if this was possible.

Snowbat

For shared contacts, add OpenLDAP server to your LAMP server and import your list. Most mail clients support LDAP address books - Thunderbird example.

For shared calendars (and todo lists), add the Apache WebDAV mudule and use iCal on WebDAV. Many clients support this - we use Thunderbird with the Lightning plugin and KMail here.