Corrupted list of address, file abook.mab.bak

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giovannimarchi
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Corrupted list of address, file abook.mab.bak

Post by giovannimarchi »

HELP ! - I have lost my address list (a big one !), the file abook.mab went corrupted into abook.mab.bak, is there any chance to recover it ?
Thank you. Giovanni Marchi
Murlan
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Joined: November 16th, 2003, 8:38 pm
Location: Grande Prairie AB,Canada

Post by Murlan »

did you try removing the .bak from the file name which is short for back up
gcevolani
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Joined: November 18th, 2003, 8:09 am
Location: Bologna

lost address book

Post by gcevolani »

This is actually the solution.

I lost my address book for a unknow problem (by Thnderbird?). I searched in this forum for a solution but i couldn't find the suggested abook-1.mab file (or something like this).

Finally I found in the profile directory the abook.mab.bak, which I renamed simply removing ".bak" and substituted to abook.mab (which I kept as abook.mab.old).

Hope this's useful.

Gustavo
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Äkiidoll
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Re: lost address book

Post by Äkiidoll »

gcevolani wrote:This is actually the solution.

I lost my address book for a unknow problem (by Thnderbird?). I searched in this forum for a solution but i couldn't find the suggested abook-1.mab file (or something like this).

Finally I found in the profile directory the abook.mab.bak, which I renamed simply removing ".bak" and substituted to abook.mab (which I kept as abook.mab.old).

Hope this's useful.

Gustavo

Thanks! I just copied my abook.mab, then renamed the copy
to abook.mab.bak to keep as a back up, or at least partial
incase I encounter your issue. My profile didnt have the
abook.mab.bak file, wasnt it supposed too? :roll:
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4a (20031110)
A prisoner of Christ Jesus, by His stripes I was healed
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

My profile didnt have the
abook.mab.bak file, wasnt it supposed too?

I think I found this file in my profile only because Thnderbird had some kind of problem, lost the address book but did save a bak copy of it.
But my problem is exaclty I don't know what that problem was!
Bye,

Gustavo
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aschmidt
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Joined: November 20th, 2003, 2:51 am
Location: Bradford, U.K.

Re: lost address book

Post by aschmidt »

I also lost a <b>big</b> address book in Mozilla 1.5 with the error message:

"Corrupt Address Book File. One of your address book files (abook.mab file) could not be read ..."

I tried to rename the bak file but it still generated the same error.
Is it possible that there is an upper limit to the number of entries in the address book before it destroys it?
Is there a manual way to fix the problem? The format of the address book looks rather cryptic to me but I am sure somebody out there knows how to fix it... (hope!)
Armin Schmidt
University of Bradford, U.K.
giovannimarchi
Guest

Re: lost address book

Post by giovannimarchi »

aschmidt wrote:I also lost a <b>big</b> address book in Mozilla 1.5 with the error message:

"Corrupt Address Book File. One of your address book files (abook.mab file) could not be read ..."

I tried to rename the bak file but it still generated the same error.
Is it possible that there is an upper limit to the number of entries in the address book before it destroys it?
Is there a manual way to fix the problem? The format of the address book looks rather cryptic to me but I am sure somebody out there knows how to fix it... (hope!)


That is exactly my same problem that started this discussion and I still did not recover my address book, lets really hope somebody knows the solution.
Giovanni Marchi
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aschmidt
Posts: 3
Joined: November 20th, 2003, 2:51 am
Location: Bradford, U.K.

Re: lost address book

Post by aschmidt »

<quote="giovannimarchi">
That is exactly my same problem that started this discussion and I still did not recover my address book, lets really hope somebody knows the solution.
Giovanni Marchi</quote>

I have since rescued my addressbook! What I did was to go into the abook.bak file with an editor (e.g. notepad) and stripped off the last few entries which appeared to be empty. They are always delimied by an opening and closing sequence tagged with a number. Then saved it as a .mab file and started Mozilla. It didn't work the first time round so I deleted more and more of these empty entries and at some stage it worked again. Since then everything is fine. And I am now doing regular backups!
Armin Schmidt
University of Bradford, U.K.
jonesmac
Guest

fix for address book

Post by jonesmac »

http://home.att.net/~cherokee67/ns7manualAB.html

I saved and copied this webpage just so I could have the fix incase he takes it off. I have had this happen twice where TB doesn't properly write the abook.mab file and refuse to use it. If you open it up in notepad and follow the directions in the link, you should be able to recover it. I was amazed that even someone like me, who nearly peed their pants when the saw how complicated the guts of the abook.mab file were, was able to fix it....twice!

Check it out
amadfi
Guest

Re: lost address book

Post by amadfi »

aschmidt wrote:<quote="giovannimarchi">
That is exactly my same problem that started this discussion and I still did not recover my address book, lets really hope somebody knows the solution.
Giovanni Marchi</quote>

I have since rescued my addressbook! What I did was to go into the abook.bak file with an editor (e.g. notepad) and stripped off the last few entries which appeared to be empty. They are always delimied by an opening and closing sequence tagged with a number. Then saved it as a .mab file and started Mozilla. It didn't work the first time round so I deleted more and more of these empty entries and at some stage it worked again. Since then everything is fine. And I am now doing regular backups!



It worked for me also (MozUP on Windows XP sp3). Thanks.
daisyduketoo
Guest

Re: Corrupted list of address, file abook.mab.bak

Post by daisyduketoo »

None of the above fixes worked. Will start with new address book and import from Outlook once again. Very frustrating experience.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Corrupted list of address, file abook.mab.bak

Post by DanRaisch »

Locking this due to the age of the original posts. If you need support, daisyduketoo, please start a new topic to ensure that your question will be recognized as a current issue.
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