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I just downloaded the latest TB. How do I get my address book back?

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  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Zenos

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I had Linux Mint 17.2 Mint Mate and updated to 17.3. Now my address book is blank. I have my email profiles but no contacts or addresses. I have one msn.com account and two gmail.com accounts. Everything else is working fine.

I had Linux Mint 17.2 Mint Mate and updated to 17.3. Now my address book is blank. I have my email profiles but no contacts or addresses. I have one msn.com account and two gmail.com accounts. Everything else is working fine.

Chosen solution

Address Book import only works from other email clients installed on your computer. It won't work with a Web-based address book, such as gmail or MSN, and it seems highly unlikely you'll have the Outlook client installed on a Linux machine.

You may be able to export your MSN address book to a CSV file and import that into Thunderbird.

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Did you back up your Thunderbird profile before you upgraded?

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No. I thought I would be able to import my address book when I set up the new Thunderbird. The import link seems to be broken. What can I do now?

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Did you reformat, or wipe, your /home folder?

Where did you imagine you would import the address book from?

The key to reinstating Thunderbird after a re-format, on when transferring it to another computer, is to make a separate copy of your profile. I'm still not sure what you have done that led to you being able to say "I have my email profiles but no contacts or addresses".

We would not normally be looking to an import function under the circumstances you describe. Just copying over of a profile.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

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I have been using Outlook for my email. Thunderbird was able to import my address book from Outlook originally with Linux 17.1. When I updated to 17.3 I also updated to the latest TB. I set up the 3 email addresses I have with Gmail and MSN. I wanted to access my address book from MSN. I went to the Tools-Import link but it seems to be broken.

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Chosen Solution

Address Book import only works from other email clients installed on your computer. It won't work with a Web-based address book, such as gmail or MSN, and it seems highly unlikely you'll have the Outlook client installed on a Linux machine.

You may be able to export your MSN address book to a CSV file and import that into Thunderbird.