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Address book differences from Windows to MacOS

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Used Thunderbird for years on Windows, then migrated to new Apple laptop (Mac Air M4 w/ Sequoia 15.6). After much effort and searching on-line support was able to successfully install my old profile from my Windows backup H/D. This restored all my emails and calendar. However, was not able to invoke my address book from within a new message, as in Windows version of Thunderbird. The address book files, Abook.mab & history.mab, are in my new MacOS Thunderbird library. There doesn't seem to be any way from the Thunderbird top menu to bring up the address book except by starting a new contact File->new->Address Book Contact. Am I missing something? Is this just a difference in the way Thunderbird was implemented for the different platforms? By design? I see references in the Support pages about "integration" of the address book under MacOS and ask whether this implies some sort of interaction/merging with the built-in Apple contacts.app but the only evidence I see of this is when the Address book is open, a new address book "Mac OS X address book" is available. Thanks for any clarification you can provide.

Used Thunderbird for years on Windows, then migrated to new Apple laptop (Mac Air M4 w/ Sequoia 15.6). After much effort and searching on-line support was able to successfully install my old profile from my Windows backup H/D. This restored all my emails and calendar. However, was not able to invoke my address book from within a new message, as in Windows version of Thunderbird. The address book files, Abook.mab & history.mab, are in my new MacOS Thunderbird library. There doesn't seem to be any way from the Thunderbird top menu to bring up the address book except by starting a new contact File->new->Address Book Contact. Am I missing something? Is this just a difference in the way Thunderbird was implemented for the different platforms? By design? I see references in the Support pages about "integration" of the address book under MacOS and ask whether this implies some sort of interaction/merging with the built-in Apple contacts.app but the only evidence I see of this is when the Address book is open, a new address book "Mac OS X address book" is available. Thanks for any clarification you can provide.

Mafitar da aka zaɓa

The .mab files have been/were converted to the .sqlite format it seems. They're in the proper directory, and with several variants, abook.sqlite, abook.sqlite-xxx, abook.vx.sqlite etc. As I can access my old addresses I assume this is all working so it's good. The Apple version of the UI (user interface) is different than windows but the only issue for me is being able to invoke the address book directly without the workaround of starting a new address/contact, but this is relatively minor. Thanks for the fast response.

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If you copied the .mab files onto the mac, they might not have been converted to the newer .sqlite format. But you can import the .mab files from Tools/Import... Import from a file... Import address books... Mork database.

The sqlite format is used in all newer versions of TB, on all operating systems.

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Zaɓi Mafita

The .mab files have been/were converted to the .sqlite format it seems. They're in the proper directory, and with several variants, abook.sqlite, abook.sqlite-xxx, abook.vx.sqlite etc. As I can access my old addresses I assume this is all working so it's good. The Apple version of the UI (user interface) is different than windows but the only issue for me is being able to invoke the address book directly without the workaround of starting a new address/contact, but this is relatively minor. Thanks for the fast response.

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The Address Book tab should open with Cmd+Shift+B, and F9 in the message composer shows the Contacts Sidebar.

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