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Address Book

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by gg.d1

gg.d1
gg.d1
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Sorry if topic not quite right.

When backing up Thunderbird - every month or so (for many years) to a separate HDD - always thought that address book was within the -- Roaming - Thunderbird - Folder. Can anyone say please, where to find the address book on the HDD as I now think, to the cost of my wife's PC's faulty HDD, it has to be exported for back up as it appears not(?) to be automatically backed up when backing up Thunderbird. Previously, not sure how long ago, I seem to remember content of emails being shown within the Thunderbird Folder, appears not to be so currently.

My wife is a little upset because my misunderstanding has caused her the loss of her email address list. In future both on mine and her PCs I I think I'll have to create folders header "E Mail Address Backup" - am I wrong?

Thanks in anticipation

gg.d1

Sorry if topic not quite right. When backing up Thunderbird - every month or so (for many years) to a separate HDD - always thought that address book was within the -- Roaming - Thunderbird - Folder. Can anyone say please, where to find the address book on the HDD as I now think, to the cost of my wife's PC's faulty HDD, it has to be exported for back up as it appears not(?) to be automatically backed up when backing up Thunderbird. Previously, not sure how long ago, I seem to remember content of emails being shown within the Thunderbird Folder, appears not to be so currently. My wife is a little upset because my misunderstanding has caused her the loss of her email address list. In future both on mine and her PCs I I think I'll have to create folders header "E Mail Address Backup" - am I wrong? Thanks in anticipation gg.d1

Modified by gg.d1

All Replies (3)

gg.d1
gg.d1 Question owner
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Hi again

Adding to my confusion, have just tested exporting/copying my address book contents to a "separate" HDD to find I have Folder within my designated folder with the Excel listing of my Thunderbird A.D. addresses. As I may well be converting to Win 10 Pro next week (with hopefully Win 7 Pro in the background), hope that the Address Book Import command will allow reinstatement of addresses because initially on exporting the addresses it appeared to have chosen an arbitrary folder before I insisted on it selecting my preferred folder.

best regards

gg.d1

Matt
Matt
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Thunderbird can not import and export it's own files.

The two critical address book files are abook.mab and history.mab and they are stored in the profile folder along with all the settings in pref.js.

I also think you have text files associated with Excel in your windows. Thunderbird exports CSV files and they are text files in the UTF text format. Excel actually struggles to open them, instead offering to import them and generally mess things up. SO lets look some more at your wife address book issue. What brought this on?

gg.d1
gg.d1 Question owner
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Thanks Matt, I now know what I'm looking for - hopefully.

1) My wife's HDD became sluggish & effectively gave up. Unfortunately did not clone operating systems including Thunderbird. However, got some of dying(?) HDD to my PC HDD via an Icy Box read facility.

2) Reinstalled 2011 Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit on wife's PC but auto MS updates struggled (250 at one attempt). Installed T Bird 68.11.0 32 bit from saved HDD but Address Book empty. Found on Win 7 Home HDD abook.mab file from April 20. But, could not usual files and folders in the T Bird 68.11.0 Folder. The Admin - App-data - Roaming --- folders are in my PC's T Bird 78.1.1 32 bit 2010 Win 7 Pro 64 bit with import/export visible when TB up & running & selected - my Add Book exported to a .csv file was read by my Excel c2014 App.

3) Hoping to update to Win 10 home 64 bit on wife's PC next week and maybe update to T B 78.1.1 so hoping to be able to import the abook.mab rescued from my wife's HDD. And, when updating my PC to Win 10 Pro, hoping to transfer my current abook.mab address book also. Also hope to clone my PC's operating system to help keep win 7 pro on my PC to run some non-win 10 applications including Photoshop "6".

Hope I've made sense, quite a struggle for an octogenarian! so the important things is getting those address books installed into T B s when Win 10s installed on our PCs.

Thanks again for a helpful, thought provoking reply.

gg.d1 (graham)