How to export contacts from an old version to a new?

[clearpoint]

Hi all,

I have been looking all over the internet to find some support in exporting my contacts from one version of Thunderbird (old computer) to a NEW computer, all i have been told online are not up to date with the correct version of Thunderbird, i have tried to export my address book but i can not find any options to export, only import.

Can someon please either take me through the steps or guide me to a page which will decribe the process?

I have looked on the Thunderbird website however it says nothing about exporting or importing contacts from different computers, it just goes on about VCards, what ever they are?

Also, how do you get Thunderbird to collect the info, contact details of people who have already emailed you, i thought it would import new contacts or any contacts when a new mail is received?

Many thanks for your time and help.

Phil.

[LIMPET235]

Hi,
See this KB article...
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird
It's easier to move your Profile rather than individual items.

As for what vCards are...
ref; the Wiki, > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard
Come in handy for transferring email contact info.

[clearpoint]

Hi,

Many thanks for the info however it is too much for me, i have no idea why it seems so complicated to do anything these days with software, this program has caused us nothing but problems, our IT people wish us to come away from it due to the problems we are having using it with a MAc on a PC server, that is another problem all together though.

All i want to do is easily put all my contacts into one folder or address book, it seems i have managed to import/export my files however when i come to import them back in, i now have loads of different address books, i only want one?

I am starting to think that online email is going to be easier for us due to the complexity of this program, you really need to know what your doing with it to use it at all, if our IT department can not figure it out then a normal worker will have more problems surely?

Thanks again and sorry for the negative words, i am really fed up with complex programs that say they are easy to set up.

Phil.

[DanRaisch]

The version of Thunderbird is not significant as the same address book file format has been in use since about 2004. The article that Limpet offered indicates that you can migrate address book data from one PC to another or one Thunderbird profile to another by copying over the address book files, which have the file extension .mab. That will work for only the two default address books (Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses) created during Thunderbird installation. The file names for those are abook.mab and history.mab respectively. If there were any user created address books in use (either created manually in TB or by import of data from another program) there would be additional address books and their respective address book files. The data from those can be imported using the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook extension.

Not sure why having just one address book is important to your use case but it's not hard to accomplish that goal after all of the required data has been imported into Thunderbird. Each imported file will result in an additional address book. You can combine the data from unwanted address books by using menu path Tools->Address Book->select (click on) the name of the unwanted address book in the left hand pane of that window. Click on any contact record shown in the right hand pane of the window, then use menu path Edit->Select All or press Cmd+A to highlight all contacts. Hold down the Ctrl key (it might be the Cmd key on a Mac) and then drag and drop the highlighted records onto the name of the address book (in the left hand pane) that you want as your sole address data source. After all of the data has been moved as desired, the address books created by the imports can deleted. (Note that it will not be possible to delete either the Personal Address Book or Collected Addresses as they are default elements of the Thunderbird installation and will be recreated if deleted. They don't have to contain data but they will be present.

The default settings for Thunderbird will not collect address data from received email but will collect addresses from outgoing messages and store in the Collected Addresses book. The target for saving those new outgoing addresses can be changed in TB's config editor. Menu path Thunderbird → Preferences->Composition->Addressing tab->select an address book from the drop down list of options.

Collecting address data from incoming messages would mean storing a lot of garbage from spam messages .

[LIMPET235]

Thank you Dan.
I wasn't sure which extension to post.

[DanRaisch]

Any time.