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Importing address book from Windows Live Mail 2011 - Unable to open Windows Live Mail Anymore

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Does anyone know how I can import my address book from my Windows Live Mail 2011 email program into Thunderbird? My Windows Live Mail 2011 program stopped working so I can no longer open it in order to export my address book and save it as an .vcf file so I need to find a way to import my entire address book of 5,000 addresses into TB without a .vcf file.

Does anyone know how I can import my address book from my Windows Live Mail 2011 email program into Thunderbird? My Windows Live Mail 2011 program stopped working so I can no longer open it in order to export my address book and save it as an .vcf file so I need to find a way to import my entire address book of 5,000 addresses into TB without a .vcf file.

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On a Windows computer, there is a Contacts folder C:\Users\username\Contacts. Do you see your 5000 addresses in that folder? If so, you can select them all, then Export to vCards, which can be imported to TB.

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Thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, this method did not work.

I followed your instructions to the letter and when I selected the contacts icon and clicked export and then chose vCards I ended up with a file that is 75kb in size and when I imported that into TB there was one contact name, mine.

Do you have another method that I could try that might work?

Thanks.

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Select all the .contact files in the Contacts folder, then Export, vCards, to save the multiple vCards. Follow the directions in my first reply to import them into TB.

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Hello,

I followed your instructions to the letter and it did not work. You are simply reposting exactly what you wrote the first time.

I opened the contacts folder and in that folder there is one (1) icon which is my username, PGK. I selected that icon and then clicked on Export in the menu in that folder and I chose vCards and saved it in a new folder on my desktop.

When I opened that folder with the exported .vcf file there was one file 75kb in size.

I opened TB and imported that .vcf file and it added one contact to my address book, just me.

I think you did not read my original post closely.

I have all 5,000 of my contacts in the address book contained within the Windows Live Mail 2011 program that stopped working the other day.

All I need to know is how to extract the address book from Windows Live Mail 2011 and import that into TB WITHOUT opening Windows Live Mail because I can’t open that program and have tried everything which is why I am switching over to TB.

Thanks for any additional help you can provide.

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Obviously, your 5000 WLM contacts are not in the Contacts folder, so you have to look for the Contacts.edb file that contains the WLM contacts. This is located in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\Default\15.5\DBStore, but you have to set the Explorer View options to show hidden files and folders, as well as protected operating system files. Then I suggest you use a program like LiveContactsView, mentioned here, to open the edb file and export it to a comma-separated values (csv) file. A csv file can be imported to TB, but you will probably want to first edit it in a spreadsheet to make the imported fields match the structure of the TB address book.