where is Thunderbird address book -- need to recover

[Guest]

I need to find my Thunderbird address book. It got corrupted and my PC crashed. So I need to restore. While I have restoration files, I have a surprising problem: I cannot get my Thunderbird to tell me where the address book is supposed to be, nor what the name of the book is supposed to be

I use Win Xp 2000, latest version of Thunderbird, and I have created a partition on my PC (laptop) for Thunderbird profile. But there is no file there with the name 'contacts', 'address book', 'personal', or with the extension 'mab'

I earlier used Outlook and imported all email contacts from there

so I have a full backup but cannot recover address book because I do not know which file to recover. I do not want to recover the whole content of the profile folder, because I would lose many recent emails that way

can anyone tell me what file to recover?

thanks

...e

[Daifne]

To bring in your old mail (without losing the new) and your address books, follow these instruction.

I want you to install this extension: mboximport: http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=2074

To install a Thunderbird extension do the following:
Right click the download link and choose "Save Link As...". Then open Thunderbird, in Thunderbird go to Tools->Extensions->Install. Find the just downloaded .xpi file and select it. The installation will now begin.

When it's installed, you will have a new menu item in Tools called Import Mbox. Select it and when you get to the Windows file navigation window, find your OLD profile and get the files with no extension that you want from Mail/*account*. Example: there are two files and 1 folder in your profile for your inbox. Inbox.sbd is the folder, inbox.msf is the index and inbox (no extension) is the actual message file. The last one is the one you want. Do this for each folder that contains messages that you want to bring in. They will be in a new folder which you can then move the messages out of and sort as you want.

For your address books, Close TB. Find your old profile and in the top level of it you will find some files with the .mab extension. TB creates two, abook.mab and history.mab. These are your main address books. If you created any of your own, they will also be named with the .mab extension. These files can be just copied right into your new profile at the same level if you haven't added any new ones to the new address book. Let them copy over any existing files. If you do have addresses in the new address book already, then rename the old ones and copy them in that way.

If you have any filters set in your accounts, the files you want to copy is msgFilterRules.dat This goes in the Mail/*account* folder. For Junk controls training, the file is training.dat and it is kept in the top level of the profile folder.

That should be everything. Let me know how it turns out.

[GordMcFee]

I need to find my Thunderbird address book. It got corrupted and my PC crashed. So I need to restore. While I have restoration files, I have a surprising problem: I cannot get my Thunderbird to tell me where the address book is supposed to be, nor what the name of the book is supposed to be

I use Win Xp 2000, latest version of Thunderbird, and I have created a partition on my PC (laptop) for Thunderbird profile. But there is no file there with the name 'contacts', 'address book', 'personal', or with the extension 'mab'

I earlier used Outlook and imported all email contacts from there

so I have a full backup but cannot recover address book because I do not know which file to recover. I do not want to recover the whole content of the profile folder, because I would lose many recent emails that way

can anyone tell me what file to recover?

thanks

...e

See Daifne's advice above. Also, exactly what do you want to import? Just the address book? Email? Some email?

The address books have a .mab extension. Make sure your system is set to show hidden files and folders.