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Imported Address Book not linking - when typing, results are red

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  • Last reply by Zenos

angelaam
angelaam
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OS - Windows Vista Thunderbird Version 24.6.6

Issue: Address book was imported into Mozilla from Windows Live Mail 2006. When trying to send an email, even though the contacts are listed in the address book, when typing them out in a new email, they are still flashing up in red.

Troubleshooting performed: Composed new mail, typed out email manually - this added to address book. There were four copies of the address book listed, deleted the duplicates and migrated the addresses from the imported book to Personal Address Book. Still not working. Opened Address book and selected contact, attempted to compose mail to selected contact, failed. Checked Address Book entries - found that the entries didn't import properly into the following fields: First, Last, Email - rather they got imported as Display Name, Nickname (with nickname being the email address)

Solution: Went into each contact, and modified them by moving the 'nickname' (which contained the email address) to the 'email address' field. Now able to send emails through to the contact.

Questions: 1) When importing the Address from Windows Live Mail - how can we stop it from importing/mapping the email address field into the nickname field? 2) Is there a faster way to update all the contacts to copy across from Nickname field to the Email field?

Thanks, Angela

OS - Windows Vista Thunderbird Version 24.6.6 Issue: Address book was imported into Mozilla from Windows Live Mail 2006. When trying to send an email, even though the contacts are listed in the address book, when typing them out in a new email, they are still flashing up in red. Troubleshooting performed: Composed new mail, typed out email manually - this added to address book. There were four copies of the address book listed, deleted the duplicates and migrated the addresses from the imported book to Personal Address Book. Still not working. Opened Address book and selected contact, attempted to compose mail to selected contact, failed. Checked Address Book entries - found that the entries didn't import properly into the following fields: First, Last, Email - rather they got imported as Display Name, Nickname (with nickname being the email address) Solution: Went into each contact, and modified them by moving the 'nickname' (which contained the email address) to the 'email address' field. Now able to send emails through to the contact. Questions: 1) When importing the Address from Windows Live Mail - how can we stop it from importing/mapping the email address field into the nickname field? 2) Is there a faster way to update all the contacts to copy across from Nickname field to the Email field? Thanks, Angela

All Replies (1)

Zenos
Zenos
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If you import via CSV fie, you should be shown a dialog that asks you to re-sort address book fields so the fields in the imported address book correspond with those in Thunderbird's Address Book.

Did this not happen?

See "From somewhere else to Thunderbird:" here:

http://www.ramsden.org.uk/11_Thunderbird_Settings_and_the_Profile.html

I don't know of any easy way to work directly with the address book file itself; it's not organized in a user-friendly manner internally. These matters are usually best addressed either before importing (i.e. tweak the CSV file in a spreadsheet program) or via the import dialog.

Alternative formats such as vcf or vCard may avoid the need to massage the data, but IMHO are less suited to managing address books. If you can use these formats, this add-on can be useful:

https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html

Modified by Zenos