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How can I share the same address book across computers?

There are several different ways you can share an address book.  Each method has different benefits to consider:

  1. Sync each computer to the same Google account.  This is a simple way to keep a few computers in sync, and works well when the same person/family is using the same computers.
  2. Use the Handy Address Book Server.  This is the most powerful/flexible method for sharing the same address book.  It offers the benefit of immediate updates on all computers and the ability to set different levels of permissions for each user.  This method also enables users who are not using Handy Address Book or Windows to access the address book through any web browser.  You can run your own copy of Handy Address Book Server on your network, or you can sign up for a hosted account where you have access to Handy Address Book Server on servers run/maintained by Beiley Software.
  3. Copy your address book file (*.abk) between computers.  This is the most manual method, but if you don't need frequent updates this can be an option to consider.

Note:  Do not place your address book file (*.abk) file on a shared network drive and access it from multiple computers at the same time.  You can lose data this way.  When Handy starts it reads in all data from the file, and stores it in memory until the program exits.  Whenever you make any edit, the complete address book file is written back to disk.  If multiple computers are writing to the same address book file you can overwrite each other's changes.  It would be okay to do this if you completely exit Handy from computer 1 before opening Handy on computer 2.  You just do not want to have the same file open from multiple computers at the same time.

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