Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How can I bring my existing contact list into a new Thunderbird account?

more options

I tried to use the 'address book'/ 'tools'/ 'import' commands and it will not let me advance to the next page. I have saved my existing emails contact list as a .csv file, but I don't find a place that it asks for a file to be used to update my Thunderbird list.

I tried to use the 'address book'/ 'tools'/ 'import' commands and it will not let me advance to the next page. I have saved my existing emails contact list as a .csv file, but I don't find a place that it asks for a file to be used to update my Thunderbird list.

Chosen solution

re :I tried to use the 'address book'/ 'tools'/ 'import' commands and it will not let me advance to the next page.

In 'Address Book'

  • 'Tools' > ' Import'
  • select 'Address Books' and click on 'Next
  • select 'Text file (LDIF, .tab, .csv, .txt) and click on 'Next'
  • locate and select the *.csv file and click on 'Open'

You may need to map the column heading to match those in Thunderbird.

Alternatively, edit the ,csv file to use those column headers before you try to import. Note: Thunderbird uses two fields for first and last name, so if you currently have them under one field/column as eg: Name, I suggest you edit before importing. Here is a link to a page that list all the default column headers used in the standard Address Book in Thunderbird.

See images as guide The first image shows the process and I edited the .csv file to use same field headers in same order, so they match. But you may need to move the Record data to import up or down to select and match the correct columns.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (2)

more options

Chosen Solution

re :I tried to use the 'address book'/ 'tools'/ 'import' commands and it will not let me advance to the next page.

In 'Address Book'

  • 'Tools' > ' Import'
  • select 'Address Books' and click on 'Next
  • select 'Text file (LDIF, .tab, .csv, .txt) and click on 'Next'
  • locate and select the *.csv file and click on 'Open'

You may need to map the column heading to match those in Thunderbird.

Alternatively, edit the ,csv file to use those column headers before you try to import. Note: Thunderbird uses two fields for first and last name, so if you currently have them under one field/column as eg: Name, I suggest you edit before importing. Here is a link to a page that list all the default column headers used in the standard Address Book in Thunderbird.

See images as guide The first image shows the process and I edited the .csv file to use same field headers in same order, so they match. But you may need to move the Record data to import up or down to select and match the correct columns.

more options

very helpful, thank you! I had to rearrange everything to match perfectly the items on the left side to the right. Then it imported the info. Also I had selected to 'import everything', when I changed that to import only 'address books', on the next page it came up with my saved file location.