How can I find my address book's file to restore it from backup?
Recently, I needed to do a major upgrade to Fedora 43 so I did a full backup first for safety. After the upgrade, I needed to install Thunderbird to recover access to my email. For the first time in over 20 years, I had to re-enter the data for my various email accounts and now I find that my address book is gone. How can I locate the proper files in my backup and restore them while Thunderbird isn't running?
Chosen solution
You would need to copy abook.sqlite and history.sqlite from the backup profile folder to the new profile. To find the current folder, try
- TB menu > Help > Troubleshooting Information
- click 'Profiles' near the bottom > about:profiles > Local Directory > click 'Open Folder' button
That should give you an idea where the backup folder is.
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Chosen Solution
You would need to copy abook.sqlite and history.sqlite from the backup profile folder to the new profile. To find the current folder, try
- TB menu > Help > Troubleshooting Information
- click 'Profiles' near the bottom > about:profiles > Local Directory > click 'Open Folder' button
That should give you an idea where the backup folder is.
Modified by Ed
In my case I'll hve to restore those files from a compressed backup first. It's late now, so I'll do it tomorrow and report back.
Sorry about taking so long to get back to you, but I've been distracted. The most recent backup I have was from just before the upgrade, and it was so long since I'd backed up before that those files don't exist. What files should I be looking for, or at least, what extensions. I'm a retired BOFH, so I shouldn't need much if any hand-holding, but I do need some pointers to Useful Information.
Later: I found both abook.mab and history.mab in the backup and tried importing the abook file, but it didn't seem to have any effect, even after restarting Thunderbird.
Even later: I saw that the Import tool had put the .mab file into my profile, so I tried importing from that and it worked. Don't know to put the history.mab file, but it's not as important.
Modified by sideburns
> Don't know to put the history.mab file
Did you try TB menu > Tools > Import > Import from a file?
No, because I didn't see where it would go. OK, I've imported it into (I presume) my address book but don't see a difference.
sideburns said
No, because I didn't see where it would go. OK, I've imported it into (I presume) my address book but don't see a difference.
History.mab is Collected addresses, so maybe you didn't have any in the category.
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