Hello there,I've offered to set up an e-mail system for a local community group. I’m not a tech expert, but do have some pretty good basic understanding of these things so I thought that what they wanted would be pretty easy to do. It’s actually proving quite tricky though.Any help on how I could achieve the following would therefore be really appreciated.They need an address book that syncs between a number of computers (both PCs and Macs of various ages).There’ll be one or two administrators who add contacts, ideallyContacts will be grouped into lists such as Staff, Customers, or Board. When adding a new contact, if would be great if there was a field (or some other prompt) that reminded people to categorise / add people to the appropriate group. (Though not perhaps the most ideal, to be able to drag people from the main address book list into the Groups in Contacts does work ok).The groups need to sync across all address books - i.e. when anyone writes an e-mail to 'Staff' everyone in the latest version of the group will receive the mail.I thought this would be simple to do, but am finding it quite a thing to achieve.I thought Contacts would be the solution but I don’t think it’s possible to sync Groups across multiple computers with something like Gmail, that a cross-platform e-mail client (such as Thunderbird ) could access. Or am I missing something? Is it possible to sync groups between Contacts and iCloud? And is it possible to access an iCloud address book from a Windows PC?To be honest, it doesn't have to be Contacts that we use, but I like using it, and know it moderately well.As I say, this feels like it should be really simple, but I'm really struggling - any help would be much appreciated.Many thanks,tim

Can I sync Contacts groups between computers

Hello there,

I've offered to set up an e-mail system for a local community group. I’m not a tech expert, but do have some pretty good basic understanding of these things so I thought that what they wanted would be pretty easy to do. It’s actually proving quite tricky though.

Any help on how I could achieve the following would therefore be really appreciated.

They need an address book that syncs between a number of computers (both PCs and Macs of various ages).
There’ll be one or two administrators who add contacts, ideally
Contacts will be grouped into lists such as Staff, Customers, or Board. When adding a new contact, if would be great if there was a field (or some other prompt) that reminded people to categorise / add people to the appropriate group. (Though not perhaps the most ideal, to be able to drag people from the main address book list into the Groups in Contacts does work ok).
The groups need to sync across all address books - i.e. when anyone writes an e-mail to 'Staff' everyone in the latest version of the group will receive the mail.

I thought this would be simple to do, but am finding it quite a thing to achieve.

I thought Contacts would be the solution but I don’t think it’s possible to sync Groups across multiple computers with something like Gmail, that a cross-platform e-mail client (such as Thunderbird ) could access. Or am I missing something? Is it possible to sync groups between Contacts and iCloud? And is it possible to access an iCloud address book from a Windows PC?

To be honest, it doesn't have to be Contacts that we use, but I like using it, and know it moderately well.

As I say, this feels like it should be really simple, but I'm really struggling - any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,

tim

Posted on Jul 6, 2015 6:31 AM