why are you exporting your address books on such a regular basis that something like that is an annoyance?

Because I have had a lot of additions and deletions of contacts and I want to back it up after each change.

Try copying the *.mab files. You could automate this by running Thunderbird from a batch file where

copy *.mab <your backup location>

is executed after Thunderbird closes.

Hi Zenos,

Thanks for your response. However, the instructions are rather vague. Copy the ".mab files from where? I see two of them right in my default Thunderbird profile. I gather the destination is my profile. Where are they coming from?

Thanks.

The address data is stored inside your profile as mab files, eg abook.mab, history.mab. Rather than going through the multiple step process of exporting each address book to LDIF, just copy *.mab to wherever you keep your backups. You then have an complete copy of your current Address Book.

It does occur to me that we recommend exporting and importing the address book as a means to correct internal errors, usually when it stops accepting changes. So if you were to notice that a recent change hasn't been saved, the export to LDIF would still be a useful corrective measure.

My point is that you are choosing to follow a multiple-step process as a matter of routine and there is no easy way to automate it. Copying *.mab OTOH is well suited to being run automatically in a batch or script with no manual intervention.

I synch my valuable address books to an online cloud address book so I also have that as a fallback in case of local hardware malfunction.

Aaaah, that makes perfect sense now. I do like your idea far better. I will build a batch file to do this. Never know what better ideas are out there until you ask! Thank you.

Thank you, Zenos. You have helped me a lot.