transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

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artfoxx
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transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

Hello:
Can I get help in transferring my address book from SM2.48 to Thunderbird Thanks Art
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DanRaisch
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by DanRaisch »

Copy the files abook.mab and history.mab from the SeaMonkey profile and paste them into the Thunderbird profile. Note that this will replace any data that already existed in the Thunderbird address books.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_SeaMonkey
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Thunderbird
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tanstaafl
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_addres ... n_profiles if you have more than the two default address books.
artfoxx
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

Again my thanks for your response to help me transfer address book from SM to Thunderbird. But so far I have not been successful. What did happen: I found the abook.mab file (in the specific Profile) and I copied and pasted it to the Thunderbird application. Then I re-started my pc and went back to Thunderbird and lo and behold it was there! BUT it was also in the three other different email accounts.

Not realizing that till afterwards, I deleted from one of the other emails accounts in Thunderbird and the abook.mab disappeared from all four. And that was because I had placed abook.mab in the list of files for the general folder for Thunderbird.

I then tried to replace the abook.mab in the actual Profile by copy and paste and nothing happened. So my ongoing concern is where should the abook.mab originally be found in SM and can it be copied (or is it a hidden file) and if I now have the same profile in Thunderbird by a prior copying of the profile why does the abook.mab not appear in the Thunderbird email accounts. I hope explains what I am doing wrong and again your analysis and patience can put me on the correct path.

Is there a possibility that my installation of Thunderbird is corrupt and/or because all the account folders I have of emails sub-folders in additional to sent, trash etc.) were never properly transferred in the first place. regards Art
artfoxx
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

I returned to the SM application and per the instructions in Mozillazine, I went to the HELP listiing selected TROUBLESHOOT INFORMATION. then the ABOUT SUPPORT page will open and Under the "Application Basics", There is NO button marked OPENING CONTAINING FOLDER. But there is a PROFILE FOLDER and to its right is OPEN FOLDER.
I realize that this is not an urgent matter for change but I hope that it will be fixed.

SO for the profile I was interested in - there it was the address book "abook.mab".

NOW I thought -I can copy that and if I find the similar HELP listing in Thunderbird application (after I closed the SM link) and going to Thunderbird application I could paste my address book file there and it would be done. NO HELP listing located in the Thunderbird email accounts page that I could find. If there is, then it could be presumed that would solve the address book file being transferred in Thunderbird. And that I think would be an easy way to process the transfer.

so I am still struggling to get the address book for each of my transferred profile.
Regards
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DanRaisch
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by DanRaisch »

It seems you are laboring under a misapprehension. Address books are not account specific; they are profile specific. It is not possible to have an address book that is unique to a particular account in either Thunderbird or SeaMonkey. You apparently made the correct transfer in your 12:57am post but did not realize it at the time.
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tanstaafl
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

I changed the name of the button in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folde ... _Help_menu based on your comment.
artfoxx
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

Thank you again for your input. Your analysis quote" duplicate, locking" - I don't really understand. I do understand that an address book is unique to each respective separate profile and not to an email account. However, I don't understand why when I find the correct address book into its specific profile and then copy and try to paste it to the corresponding profile in Thunderbird, then it appears as well in the remaining 3 address books.
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tanstaafl
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

It shouldn't. Sounds like there is something wrong with your profile. All of the *.mab files should be in the same directory as the prefs.js file. Check that the directory structure of the profile is consistent with whats in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folde ... he_profile . I'm thinking mainly of the Mail subdirectory, with separate child directories for each account and Local Folders.
artfoxx
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

As of now 6:51pm on 5/18, I decided earlier today to start from scratch. So I deleted all the prior attempts to download TB and made sure that the profiles for my 4 users included their own address book in the same folder as their respective prefs.js files. I was able to re-install the first of the four email accounts and I saw all the email sub-folders and the address book as well. Now comes the harder part: installing the second email account with its respective profile and which will have its address book overwritten by the address book now in existence
with the first email. I did try to send an email to myself ( 1st email person) but it failed because of a server error. That server error shows where the email trying to be sent are stored in the file name has at the end: ..\Mail\.mail\myname\comcast.net so I am wondering if that has to change to show the ending to be: Mail\myname\inbound.att.net (I am trying to get rid of all references to my former ISP, comcast) and if so how and where do I change that stored file's name?

So now I have 2 questions: do the remaining 3 address books have to change to something other "abook.mab"
or can they be left as is? An do I place the profiles for the 3 other emails accounts in the same Profile folder in the now current one that has my personal profile? Thanks again.
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tanstaafl
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

"An do I place the profiles for the 3 other emails accounts in the same Profile folder in the now current one that has my personal profile? "

You typically have all of the accounts (for one user) in one profile. It makes things much easier.

Thunderbird only knows about abook.mab and history.mab by default. Any other address books it won't discover, you have to explicitly tell it about them by editing prefs.js. The KB article explains how to use an add-on to import other address books "as is", letting the add-on update prefs.js for you. That is much less error prone (and easier) that editing prefs.js yourself. It also avoids the need to somehow convert the *.mab file into a standard format (such as a .csv file) that the tools -> import wizard knows how to import. Please read http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_addres ... n_profiles before you ask any more questions about address books. If you don't understand it, that's fine, tell me whats confusing or where it has too much techno-babble and I will try to improve it. The more specific you can be, the better.

The "local directory" for an account is where it stores it mail folders and message filters. It typically named after the POP/IMAP mail server, though you can change it. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders if you want to import mail folders into another account.
artfoxx
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

Hello again and here is the status
1. All four emails have an abook.mab in their respective profiles and they are all different in size..

2. Three of the respective email accounts are now shown in the TB program but they all have the same address book as the first one.

3. The forth email account wouldn't load into TB because its password is not accepted - tried this 6 times. The forth id and password work by themselves when working in their own ISP when I have it set up independently and not as part of the TB program.

4. When I try to add this forth one into TB, its major heading will "automatically" be the same as the first account installed. All four email accounts have different names and profiles. And whichever email account is at the top of TB first, its address book gets listed in the others. Don't know how to overcome that and it is probably a cause of the commonality to all email addresses instead of each having their own address book included in their respective profiles.

6. I tried once before to uninstall all the TB folders/files and then went to the Registry to edit out all the TB references, then I saved the Registry. Then I re-installed TB from scratch and still have the problem of a single address book being stored in all 3 accounts.

5. I have not found any article in the forum archives that describes a solution to these problems (unless I am not finding it!).

And as before I want to thank you for your ongoing help.
Regards
Art
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tanstaafl
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

Just to be clear, are you trying to merge four of your profiles (each of which had one account) into one profile with four accounts, or are you trying to setup individual profiles for four people?
artfoxx
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by artfoxx »

What I am trying to do is to transfer to Thunderbird four email accounts, from SeaMonkey v2.48 each with its own profile and abook.mab, so that I will still have four email accounts each with same profiles they had in SM and each with its own abook.mab. (The reason is we switched to AT&T and they do not support SM; but AT&T does support Firefox and Thunderbird.)

What I have experienced is when I start with the first email account everything is OK; then when I add the second account it takes on the appearance of being a sub-account of the first and won't have it own address book but that of the first email account. And the same thing happens with accounts 3 and 4. When you use SM and go to the browser and then click on Mail & Newsgroups you get to the mail files corresponding to your choice initially at the Program Manager.

What also I have found is that Thunderbird does not have a Program manager( as far as I know) such as in SM and the latter allows you to select any of the four accounts based on the profile.ini file and this has the profiles of each of the four accounts in a hidden folder somewhere separate from the program where the .exe file is along with other folder/files .
My apologies if I had not made that clear earlier.

Regards
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tanstaafl
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Re: transferring SM address book to Thunderbird

Post by tanstaafl »

Accounts don't have their own address books. They're global - used by all accounts. Thunderbird does have a profile manager which you can use to select what profile you want to use. Just pass a -P command line argument with Thunderbird to launch it.

The closest you can do to having each account have its own abook.mab is to have separate address books for each account (with different names, you can only have one abook.mab) and then use the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook add-on to configure for each identity what address book it should use for auto-complete. Each account has a different identity. Its also possible for an account to have multiple identities, but that is a optional feature that I suspect you aren't using. You can also use that add-on to import the different abook.mab files as address books. It will give them a different name and filename. Nothing stops you from renaming them to match the corresponding account if you want to. Right click on the address book name (in the address book window) and select properties to edit its name. See https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html .

Thunderbird has no concept of sub-accounts (they're all peers) so I don't understand what you saw that you interpreted as "takes on the appearance of being a sub-account of the first" implies. Please explain.

I'm wondering if you chose view -> folders -> unified rather than view -> folders -> all. A "unified view" is just smoke and mirrors to change how the folders and accounts are listed in the folder pane to have all of the accounts inboxes under a global inbox, all of the sent folders under a global sent folder etc. If you change to view -> folders -> all it undoes that and displays them normally. How the accounts and folders were actually stored within the profile never changed. You can verify that by looking at the "local directory" setting in each accounts server settings before and after changing the view setting.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders for how to import mail folders from the SM profile.

"this has the profiles of each of the four accounts in a hidden folder somewhere separate from the program where the .exe file is along with other folder/files ."

My impression is that SeaMonkey2 stores accounts in its profile under the Mail and ImapMail child directories, just like Thunderbird does.
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