Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sidebar

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Gone Postal
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Joined: December 2nd, 2008, 1:00 pm

Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sidebar

Post by Gone Postal »

Updated to Thunderbird v52.0b1 on W10 64-bit yesterday. I have the address book set to display in the left hand sidebar. When I open Thunderbird, the sidebar shows the Address Book header and the drop-down shows "Personal Address Book". The list below is not populated. Click on the drop-down and re-select Personal Address Book and the list populates.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by DanRaisch »

Moving to Thunderbird Support.

Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
Gone Postal
Posts: 501
Joined: December 2nd, 2008, 1:00 pm

Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by Gone Postal »

Just realised that the Address Book is displayed through the Contacts Sidebar extension. I'm running Contacts Sidebar 1.7pre which is the latest pre-release (2012-09-04). The released version no longer works and throws an error message. 1.7pre is running with add-on compatibility checking disabled.

I can't check in Safe Mode as this disables the extension.

The author of the add-on has done no published work on it since 2012 so it looks as if this is another to join the list of "good while it lasted".
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DanRaisch
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Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by DanRaisch »

You shouldn't need that extension in current versions of Thunderbird, which include that functionality. Try disabling or uninstalling the extension and then closing and restarting Thunderbird.
Gone Postal
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Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by Gone Postal »

Indeed so in the "Compose" view. However, the F9 function does not work in the main window which is where I use the extension so that I can quickly check something in the address book. The extension shows the address book at the bottom of the folder pane which is a handy use of an expanse of white space on my screen.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by DanRaisch »

I used that extension in the past and don't remember it ever opening the sidebar in the main window, only in the compose window. Not saying that it didn't, but I have multiple accounts so that left sidebar is not empty in my case.
Gone Postal
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Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by Gone Postal »

As a final footnote, the search box at the top of the address book listing for this extension has also stopped working.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by tanstaafl »

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Enter_email_addresses

"The Contacts Sidebar add-on replaces the built-in Contacts Sidebar and displays an address book in a sidebar within Thunderbird's 3-pane window (main window). It supports several shortcuts that can be used to enter a message. However the current version does not work with Thunderbird 3.1 or later even if you disable version checking. There is a download link for a 1.7 beta in a post at The adopted home of Contacts Sidebar forum that supposedly works with recent versions. " That was posted Wed Feb 04, 2015

I installed the version of disable add-on compatibility checks for version 40+ I was able to install the old version of the Contacts add-on. (you need to ignore the warnings, including the permanent one about "add-on compatibility checking is disabled. you may have incompatible add-ons.") It has a fatal XML parsing error. I removed it and installed the 1.7 beta. It has the same problem with version 52 beta 1 but works okay with version 45.7.0. I'll add a note on the Etherpad TB 52 support list about that and send a email to the author.
Gone Postal
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Joined: December 2nd, 2008, 1:00 pm

Re: Address Book contents not displaying in left hand sideba

Post by Gone Postal »

tanstaafl wrote:http://kb.mozillazine.org/Enter_email_addresses

"The Contacts Sidebar add-on replaces the built-in Contacts Sidebar and displays an address book in a sidebar within Thunderbird's 3-pane window (main window). It supports several shortcuts that can be used to enter a message. However the current version does not work with Thunderbird 3.1 or later even if you disable version checking. There is a download link for a 1.7 beta in a post at The adopted home of Contacts Sidebar forum that supposedly works with recent versions. " That was posted Wed Feb 04, 2015

I installed the version of disable add-on compatibility checks for version 40+ I was able to install the old version of the Contacts add-on. (you need to ignore the warnings, including the permanent one about "add-on compatibility checking is disabled. you may have incompatible add-ons.") It has a fatal XML parsing error. I removed it and installed the 1.7 beta. It has the same problem with version 52 beta 1 but works okay with version 45.7.0. I'll add a note on the Etherpad TB 52 support list about that and send a email to the author.
@tanstaafl

Thanks.
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