[SOLVED] Address Book Files to Copy to New Profile?

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BuddhaNature
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Joined: January 3rd, 2008, 9:44 am
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[SOLVED] Address Book Files to Copy to New Profile?

Post by BuddhaNature »

Thunderbird Portable v91.5.0

I am going to do a complete reinstall of Thunderbird Portable and want to selectively copy my address books from the old profile to the new profile of the newly installed TB.

I looked on the internet for details of this and the advice is that all I need to copy over are two files; abook.sqlite and history.sqlite.

However, when I look in my old profile for these files I find that I have the following address book files:

abook.sqlite (size 320KB)
abook.v2.sqlite (size 320KB)
abook-1.sqlite (size 320KB)
abook-1.v2.sqlite (size 320KB)

history.sqlite (size 320KB)
history.v2.sqlite (size 320KB)

This is very confusing. Precisely what of those files do I need to copy over from the old to the new profile?

I should note that in my Address Book (GUI) I have three Address Books listed; Personal Address Book; Computer Address Book (created by me, I think); and Collected Addresses. My understanding is that copying over abook.sqlite and history.sqlite only amounts to effectively copying over the Personal Address Book and the Collected Addresses. So how do I work out how to copy over the Computer Address Book? Should there be a separate sqlite file for the Computer Address Book?
Last edited by BuddhaNature on January 22nd, 2022, 7:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
OS: Windows 10 Pro. x64
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DanRaisch
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Re: Address Book Files to Copy to New Profile?

Post by DanRaisch »

The complicating factor here is that when the user adds an address book, the name displayed internally (in this case, Computer Address Book) is not the name given to the equivalent file on the hard drive. Try creating the "Computer Address Book" manually on that computer but don't populate it. You'll find a new file on the hard drive. Determine which of the abook files (probably abook.v2.sqlite) represents Computer Address Book in the old profile, perhaps by editing that address book, adding a new address or changing an existing one. Then close Thunderbird and in the new profile and at the hard drive level, rename the new address book to match the name of the file in the old profile that you just edited. Restart Thunderbird with the newer profile and see if that third address book is populated.
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BuddhaNature
Posts: 537
Joined: January 3rd, 2008, 9:44 am
Location: Scotland

Re: Address Book Files to Copy to New Profile?

Post by BuddhaNature »

Thanks very much for the response Dan, greatly appreciated.

Turned out "Computer Address Book" was associated to abook-1.sqlite. (Lord knows what abook-1.v2.sqlite was/is but my problem is fixed anyway.) All this would be much easier if the sqlite files were directly named after the actual title of the address books. Ah, well.

Thanks again.
OS: Windows 10 Pro. x64
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