Thunderbird address book problem

[skippyking]

G'day. I'm using Thuderbird v 2.0.0.6 on a Windows XP Pro v 2002 SP2 OP.

My problem is I can't add, modify or delete contacts in my address book and make them 'stick'....as soon as I close the amended address book all the work I have done is lost and as soon as I open it again it is back to where I started.

I have many old contacts I wish to delete and ones I need to modify plus the new contacts I wish to keep.

Can anyone help me to rectify this problem?

TIA

[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.

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.

[skippyking]

Thanks Dan....unfortunately that failed to work....every time I restarted TB the old stuff came back and displaced the modified stuff.

[DanRaisch]

OK, another variation with a bit more of a downside if you currently have Mailing Lists defined in the current Address Book: you will lose those Mailing Lists.

Export the data from the current address book to a CSV format file. (In the address book window use menu path Tools->Export->Save as type= Comma Separated.) Edit the CSV file in a spreadsheet like OpenOffice Calc or Excel. Save the edited file in CSV format.

In Thunderbird, import the data from the edited CSV file using (in the Address Book window) menu path Tools->Import->Address Books->Text file->navigate to the location of the saved CSV file->select Files of type = CSV and select the edited filename, click on "Open".

From this point, repeat the process of deleting the data from the current Personal Address Book and then drag-and-drop the data from the imported address book to replace the data in the Personal Address Book.

[skippyking]

Nup. Still won't work Dan

[DanRaisch]

Wow. Very strange.

OK, one more shot at this, then I'm out of bullets.

It feels like a long shot but please check this article for relevance -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Long_time_to_ ... dress_book

[skippyking]

Dan I deleted the abook.mab file and it seems to have fixed the problem. As suggested by Daifne in the thread "Address book not updating"

Thanks for your efforts mate

[DanRaisch]

You're quite welcome.

[thull54`]

I want to import my csv file into gmail. Where is it located?

[Daifne]

thull54`.
You have a different problem. Please start a new topic. These issues can get quite involved and helping more than one person in a topic just confuses everyone. Thanks.

Also this topic is almost two years old. I'm locking it.