First, select the current Personal Address Book in Address Book, Tools/Export, name it PABbak, Save as type: LDIF, same for Collected Addresses. Press Alt if the Menu Bar with Tools is hidden.

Next, Help/Troubleshooting, Profile Folder, Open Folder, close TB, rename abook.sqlite to abook.sqlite.bak and history.sqlite to history.sqlite.bak, rename abook.mab.bak to abook.mab and history.mab.bak to history.mab. Restart TB and see if the old contacts appear in Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses.

Import PABbak from Tools/Import if necessary.

Thanks for helping me delve into this problem. I think I did as you suggested BUT I didn't recover my old addresses I used to have two files 1. addresses I had written to and 2. collected addresses...this was much longer I never knew their file names until you pointed them out. Is there a way to call up the names of files that look like they may have the contact names , see one that is what I want and THEN then rename it to what TB will recognize as an address file?

VTY rudyannall

If you had other address books besides Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses, and they weren't restored after the update, the process is more complicated. Did you follow the instructions exactly and see the original Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses? Other address books will have names like abook-1.mab or impab.mab in the profile folder.

Thanks again for your help. I tried to follow your instructions and I think I did. But the resulting address files were the same as my newly started ... email addresses. No sign of my old address lists. There was another thing I had trouble with recently. I tried to download a program that would reduce the size of photos so that I could send them by e-mail. As far as I could tell, that didn't work and I dumped it. But it was around the time that I lost my address files. Do you think I was hacked maybe?

I can't speculate on whether you were hacked. When you performed the mab operations, did you have file extensions displayed, i.e. 'File name extensions' checked on the View tab of File Explorer?

If you lost the address books but still have the mail folders, it's possible to scan a folder and copy addresses to a text file, which can be imported to TB:

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/copy-address/

Thanks again ,SF for giving it a stab. I don't know how to scan and copy to a text file and import to TB. Is this procedure written up somewhere that I can learn how to do it?

rudyannall

The Copy Address add-on adds a button to the View/Toolbars/Customize window that can be dragged to the Mail Toolbar. Select a set of messages, click the button, and the addresses are copied to the clipboard. Paste into a text document, or a spreadsheet so the list can be arranged according to the TB format. Export from the spreadsheet to a csv file and import to TB. But if you just have a few addresses, it may be easier to just add new contacts to TB from the text document.

Thanks again. I will try your suggestions and retry those I have. It will take me some time. Is there some way to look at a file and see if it is the long list of addresses or not? What file, backup file, or file name has the long list of e-mail addresses that I have collected in the several years of using TB?

rudyannall

The mab files, or the backups, can be viewed in a text editor like Notepad.

Apparently, all my Address Book Lists returned today... I am so happy, because I was leaning to complete depression, as it takes a long time to create theses special address lists or groups!

In the mean time, my older concern is that when I forward an email, I cannot get a clear message! Instead, all the formatting source also gets forwarded! I have tried different measures from the Settings menu, but nothing has worked! This was not always this way! I could forward any message, and just the email intended could be seen, but for a year or so, all the yiberish codes are pulled in above the message I am forwarding!

If any one has a remedy here, I would like to hear it. It could be probably a simple way to correct this issue...

Thanks. belladsx1

Apparently, all my Address Book Lists returned today... I am so happy, because I was leaning to complete depression, as it takes a long time to create theses special address lists or groups! In the mean time, my older concern is that when I forward an email, I cannot get a clear message! Instead, all the formatting source also gets forwarded! I have tried different measures from the Settings menu, but nothing has worked! This was not always this way! I could forward any message, and just the email intended could be seen, but for a year or so, all the yiberish codes are pulled in above the message I am forwarding! If any one has a remedy here, I would like to hear it. It could be probably a simple way to correct this issue... Thanks. belladsx1

If you don't back up your profile regularly, at least export the address books to LDIF format (Tools/Export...) so they can be easily recovered. If you have a lot of mailing lists, backup abook.mab abook.sqlite (Personal Address Book).

The extra information in forwarded messages looks like you have View/Headers set to All instead of Normal. Press Alt if the Menu Bar with View is hidden.

For some reason, I have needed to reinstall Thunderbird a number of times - even before the update. (Also I keep needing to reinstall Firefox. Hmm) One of the times after the update, the address books came back and I was so relieved. Now they aren't there again. I tried following the advice that was written above to someone else by changing abook.sqlite to abook.sqlite.bak and history.sqlite to history.sqlite.bak.

But I don't find abook.mab.bak or history.mab.bak.

I have abook.mab (that looks like it may be empty, 2 KB - MAB file 12/12/20), abook.mab (186 KB - BAK file 10/17/20), abook.mab-1 (2 KB - BAK file 11/21/20), abook.mab-2 (3 KB - BAK file 12/1/20). I don't seem to be able to change any of these BAK files to be another abook.mab as was suggested.

I have history.mab (seems empty - 8 KB - MAB file 12/16/20); history.mab (3,376 KB - BAK file 10/30/20; history.mab-1 (7 KB - BAK file 11/24/20); history.mab-2 (12 KB - BAK file 12/1/20). I can't change one of these either.