All Products Community Forum

I am working with thunderbird on two locations and have problems moving contents between address books and entering new contacts into address books.

On location A I have created a mailing list X under my personal address book. I could fill it by copy/paste address and name from mails received. Then I created a cardav address book Y and somehow (ctrl + left mouse?) succeeded to drag and drop the entries from X to Y and synchronized it with a nextcloud cardav file.

Now I went to location B, created a cardav address book with the same credentials as on location A and got the Y addresses synchronized.

So far, so good.

Then I tried to enter new addresses in location B into this Y online address book. Problem - I could not find a way to add new contacts into a line with copy/paste like into the X mailing list in location A. New contacts could only be added via the "New Contact" form, no copy/paste.

Then I created a mailing list in my personal address book with the same name X. I could not find a way to copy the content of the online address book Y into this list (on location B). When I tried with ctrl-left button drag and drop, the target mailing list X was forbidden. Only copying to my personal address book would be possible. But at least this mailing list X offered again the copy and paste possibility in one line, but unfortunately the list was empty.

Then I tried it with export/import. I exported Y from the online book to a vcf file on my computer, then tried to import the file to my mailing list X, but I could not find a way to import the file to the mailing list X.

I can create a new address book and move the contents of the cardav book to it. But adding new contacts is possible only via the "New Contact" form where I cannot just copy/past addresses from emails.

Any suggestion how I can work with my mailing list contacts on both locations and easily enter new contacts with copy/paste from mails without having to use the form?

I am trying to get my Address Book(s) off an old PC that barely has any resolution. I cannot locate any MAB files, only SQLITE files (abook, etc.). What is the file that the address book is found in?

I have just starting using Thundermail and one thing I am trying to understand better is Address Books in Desktop Thundermail in Windows 11.

I now have the following under address books: All address books (assume that this is just everything in all the address books), Personal Adress Book (empty), Contacts ( not sure where it comes from, probably 1 or both of the 2 emails of mine I have connected), Contacts (not sure where this came from but looks suspiciously like it comes from my gmail email or emails? as it is a long list), Thundermail Address Book (empty), Collected Addresses (looks like it picks these up from emails I send or receive).

I am interested in understanding what forms this initial list of address books, do they continue to reflect changes in the original source address books from outside or are they a once only transfer?), how I can manipulate them, probably to end up with: All address books, and other address books continuing various subsets for convenient access to a smaller list of contacts under these sub address book names.

Can I easily copy or move addresses between address books? Documentation already answering many of these questions may already exist? Thanks for any help or advice you may be able to provide.

Have been trying off and on for last couple of days to export my contacts from Thunderbird into CSV format. Internet says it's easy. Just open TB> contacts> choose the contact list you want to export> tools> export> save it as CSV. Only option in tools is to export the whole profile into a zip file and no way to select just contacts saving in CSV. So, how do you save contacts as a CSV file, getting around the export of the whole profile?

WIN 10 independant SSD. (yes i refuse to run 11)

HOW is it posssible in 2026 imprting the contacts/addresses from a prior application is still such a mess?

I have copied, pasted, imported etc and NO CONTACTS. WHY? how does this not work, I have used ai, tutorials etc and still a mess.

I use the native import under tools, Point to my old appdata profile and still nothing.

While i am here,, how in 2026 can the colors still blow? honestly,, why is my email body still 255 white and only the nav colume an inbox changes? Or is it me?

Thanks, Simple Jack

I have been having difficulties with my email service provider and Thunderbird. So am trying to export my contacts. They still, fortunately, show up in Thunderbird. When I go to export, it doesn't give me any options on saving other than exporting into a zip file a profile backup.... no contact list like I really need.

I can't match field names in Thunderbird 158.0 (64-bit) on Win 11 when importing addresses from Google .csv file. The dropdowns to pick TB fields to match the .csv header fields only show one item, usually (and obviously) the wrong one . For example, Last Name is not matched with Last Name and cannot be changed.

Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8usw6dgucrkd71l9m4hk3/ImportAddressBookMatchFieldNames.png?rlkey=216i5dyax4it6sz4909b7ujfy&dl=0

I have tried everything I have found to "move or copy contacts from one address book to another". I can't believe this functionality is NOT present. Really Clunky. Copy & paste functions would be fine. But, does not work. The other methods discussed are very clunky and I could not make them work.

When editing a contact in Address Book, after selecting a time zone from the drop down menu and saving the contact, only the first 7 characters of the time zone string are displayed in the contact view. When reopening the contact for editing, the time zone field is shown as empty again.