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I have backups on external drive, but I've had to reinstall Thunderbird on new internal drive after crash. How can I recognise & reinstall my address book?

  • 3 replies
  • 8 have this problem
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  • Last reply by hobbyfx

bclnet
bclnet
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My hard drive crashed and had to be replaced. I have backups on an external drive. I reinstalled Thunderbird and was helped to recover all my mails (with created folder structures) but I have lost ... and CANNOT find how to recover from my backups ,,, my Thunderbird Address Book, which contains hundreds of contacts grouped into various categories.

I've searched around for many hours now, with no success. Help would be GREATLY appreciated !!!

(PS. I am NOT very "techy" - so please keep explanations as simple as possible, step-by-step, without assuming that my knowledge is any more than 'very basic' !!)

Thanks, Brian

My hard drive crashed and had to be replaced. I have backups on an external drive. I reinstalled Thunderbird and was helped to recover all my mails (with created folder structures) but I have lost ... and CANNOT find how to recover from my backups ,,, my Thunderbird Address Book, which contains hundreds of contacts grouped into various categories. I've searched around for many hours now, with no success. Help would be GREATLY appreciated !!! (PS. I am NOT very "techy" - so please keep explanations as simple as possible, step-by-step, without assuming that my knowledge is any more than 'very basic' !!) Thanks, Brian

Chosen solution

Hi Zenos, Thanks for your quick response. I've now managed to find and retrieve many (but I think not all) of my contacts. Thanks again Brian

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All Replies (3)

Zenos
Zenos
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I would hope that you had your profile in your backup. If so, all you need to do is copy the backup over your new profile.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

Alternatively, you could transfer just the address book files. They have filenames ending with .mab. Two of them, abook.mab (Personal Address Book) and history.mab (Collected Addresses) can just be copied. Others, representing user-defined address books, must be imported, using the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook add-on.

bclnet
bclnet Question owner
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Chosen Solution

Hi Zenos, Thanks for your quick response. I've now managed to find and retrieve many (but I think not all) of my contacts. Thanks again Brian

hobbyfx
hobbyfx
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likewise, i've been having trouble finding answers to this question, so thank you! i've been keen to try TB for a while and i've been using it for about 2 weeks now (on a different machine) and this whole backup/restore thing is my one big complaint about using this software as i need to do it on a weekly basis ideally. i don't get it. WHY is backup/restore not an easy function in the program like it is in outlook?? even if there was a menu option that just took you to a help file and told you what to do...