Can't find address book????

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see3ducks
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Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

As of today, my address book seems to be unavailable. All of my address books are there, but now when I type in the beginning of an address it shows "red color" and doesn't self complete. It is as if Thunderbird can't recognize its own address books.

I did put Thunderbird "offline" for a test but put it back on.

T-bird 52.5.2
WinXP 32bit

I downloaded a fresh copy but no success.

All other features seem to work fine.

H E L P please
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DanRaisch
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by DanRaisch »

Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
see3ducks
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

DanRaisch wrote:Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
YES
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DanRaisch
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by DanRaisch »

Close Thunderbird and navigate to the profile folder -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
See if there are two files present with the extension .mab, one named abook.mab and the other history.mab.
see3ducks
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

DanRaisch wrote:Close Thunderbird and navigate to the profile folder -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
See if there are two files present with the extension .mab, one named abook.mab and the other history.mab.

Yes, there are two files - abook.mab and history.mab
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makaiguy
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by makaiguy »

When you open your address book in TBird do the entries show up?
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DanRaisch
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by DanRaisch »

Sorry, I should have asked you to report the size of those files as well.
see3ducks
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

makaiguy wrote:When you open your address book in TBird do the entries show up?
Yes, EXCEPT under "all addressed the fist six are blank. The same for one other book.

size....abook.mab 340K, history.mab 12K
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see3ducks
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

I deleted the blank addresses, closed T-bird, reopened T-bird - nothing changed.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by DanRaisch »

Backup you entire profile, just to be safe ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup ). The concept we're working from is that the current address book file is fragmented or corrupted and should be rebuilt to correct the issue. Before starting the procedure below, be sure to backup the Thunderbird Profile or at least all files in that profile that have the extension .mab.

1) Open Thunderbird's Address Book window and create a new Address Book (File->New->Address Book). Name it anything except Personal Address Book. (I would call it Temp Data to indicate it's purpose.)

2) Click on the your current Address Book (I'm assuming it's called Personal Address Book). Now click on any name in the right hand list pane. Press Ctrl-A or use menu path Edit->Select All to highlight all entries.

3) Drag-and-drop the data to the entry in the left hand pane for the new address book. This will copy over all of your address information. Check a number of the contact entries in the new address book to ensure that things have been copied correctly.

4) Now repeat highlighting the contents of the Personal Address Book, then press the delete key to erase the information in that book.

5) Close and restart Thunderbird and open the Address Book window.

6) Highlight all of the contacts in the Temp Data (or whatever you named it) address book and drag-and-drop the data to the Personal Address Book.

7) Close and restart Thunderbird and begin using the "recreated" Personal Address book for addressing messages. See if there has been any improvement.

A variation on this process would involve creating a new profile ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager ) , which you would not plan to use, in order to generate a new, empty Personal Address Book file (abook.mab). Then, follow the steps above through step 3, after which you would close Thunderbird, navigate to the Profile for the real account in question, delete the file abook.mab and copy over the file with that name from the newly created profile. The result is a properly formatted abook.mab file with no contents and no file corruption. Follow from step 6 to complete the data transfer, then use Profile Manager to delete that new profile.
see3ducks
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

[quote="DanRaisch"]Backup you entire profile, just to be safe ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup ). The concept we're working
. . .
. . .
. . .
I tried part of that and ended up creating a new temp profile BUT that new profile only has times.json in it. No abook.mab

Now what?

Thanks
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see3ducks
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Re: Can't find address book????

Post by see3ducks »

got past that am now continuing
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