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Can I copy address book to new profile?

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by timbo1

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I have set up a new profile but my address book is empty - is there a way to duplicate my address book from first profile to the new one?

I have set up a new profile but my address book is empty - is there a way to duplicate my address book from first profile to the new one?

All Replies (10)

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Hi timbo1.

if you have access to your old Thunderbird profile, the safest procedure would be to run Thunderbird with the old profile, export the address book and import it in the new profile. Or you can follow the instructions here.

But may I ask you, why have you created a new Thunderbird profile?

Regards, Michal

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Hi Michal

Thanks for this. I thought I would create a new profile as I have been experencing some problems with my t/b email. Some of the problems: - outboxes contain emails even though I know they hve been sent - some folders lose some of their emails automatically without me deleting them - some emails are transfered to a folder in another account but disappear from their origianal folder. - some sent emails are not actually sent but appear to have been

I thought if I could start t/b again but save my emails this might help and the way to do this would be to set-up a new profile - I may well have got this wrong!

I will not export/imprt address book until I hear from you

Any help greatly appreciated

Regards

Tim

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Hi Tim.

Creating a new profile in Thunderbird and settings your accounts from the scratch should be a solution for your problems. So feel free to export and import your address books and let us know, if you need more data to restore into your new profile.

Regards, Michal

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Hi Michal

Thanks for this - I will try! One thing you might be able to help with - how can I delete a folder? I have copied its contents to another folder and they have been successfully copied but I don't seem to be able to delete the original folder. For some reason, and I can't remember why, some folders in different accounts are copied automatically into a folder of the some name in my main account. I would like to get rid of these folders in my main account - any ideas?

Regards

Tim

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What folder do you want to remove? Some from your email account in Thunderbird?

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Yes from my main t/b email account

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If you right click on the folder, you should see (around the middle of the menu) a Delete option.

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Hi Michal - I have tried this several times and when I click delete, nothing happens - I have tried going into the folder's properties and repairing the folder and trying again - nothing happens - the folder remains. I have tried deleting other folders and the same result. All these folders are in my new profile -is there a setting somewhere that prevents me deleting. I haven't wanted to delete folders in my original profile in case I lose the information

Any ideas? Many thanks

Tim

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An alternative to the export/import route would be to work with the underlying mab files. You can copy these from one profile to another. However you can't really merge them, so the usual approach would be to import them (use the More Functions For Address Book add-on) and then move their contents into the new address books.

This approach is useful if you can't run the old installation of Thunderbird, say, when you have rescued a hard disk from a failed computer.

Have you at any point copied folders to or from a DVD or CD? Or have the folders had their attributes set to read-only (which tends to happen if an optical storage medium is used)?

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Thanks Zenos

I can now copy the address books across by export/import.

But I have another little problem:

I have 4 accounts and in what I call my main account I have 2 folders that have the same name as 2 of the other accounts i.e. mrbloogs@fast.df.

The emails to these accounts go into the named accounts but also into the folders on my 'main' account with the same names - I would like to delete these folder in the main account but I am denied access by my mail server to do this - is there any way I can delete these files?