If the hard drive wasn't corrupted, then yes you can. If you have access to hook the old hard drive to your PC, we can step you through the process.

The old computer may be fine, but it's very slow and still has problems. I did download Thurderbird and all my e-mails came through, but no address book. When Best Buy loaded up my new computer, they did not bring over Thurderbird, so I did. However if I just log into gmail all my addresses are there. I can walk through them and put them into the right address file if I can pull them in. Is it possible to just bring them in from gmail? I went to import but had no idea what to do then. Also the new e-mail screen changed a lot. Before my e-mails were shown from today back, now it's the other way, and the stuff on top of the screen is not there to allow me to change things. Can I get that back? Thanks so much for your help, you are dealing with a 75 year old that really does only do fair on computers, but I do donate every once in a while. Thanks again.

You can use your Gmail addressbook in thunderbird. Here are the basic steps: - click to addressbook - click new addressbook and from there, select 'add carddav addressbook - on next box, enter gmail.com and click next. Google will pop up to prompt you for your id and password. Once done, your online addressbook will be added

I tried that, or at least I think I did. let me put it in my words: In Thunderbird I open my addressbook, it asks for a name, whatever name I type it just adds that to the addressbook lists, but does not import anything. I tried the "import" link, that did not work either. Again I'm not that computer savy so as they say use the kiss principal, keep it simple stupid. I'm the stupid, not you. Thanks much, sorry to be a pain, but I have a BUNCH of address to bring over.

Ok. I attached a screenshot. - click to addressbook - one entry on menu is 'New Address Book' - click that and a drop down menu appears with an option for a carddav addressbook - click that and on new pane, type in a descriptive name for the address book in top line and on second line, enter gmail.com - google will produce a pop up for you to enter your gmail credentials. - once done, it enters location for the addressbook that you can now use in Thunderbird.

Yea, thanks. I was not hitting on the down arrow. If you hit just the box it just asks for the name of the new address book. That was my problem. Thanks so much for your help! Merry Christmas!!!

You're very welcome. Merry Christmas to you, as well.

Well David, I thought it brought it in, but all it brought in was the phone numbers that apparently came from my cell phone. How do I get the e-mail address brought in? I'm sure it's me, but help please there are a lot of them and I use them daily. thanks again

From your earlier posts, I inferred that you had an addressbook in Gmail.

I do have my e-mail address all in g-mail, but all it pulled over was phone numbers. No idea just why. Any thoughts? When Best Buy pulled it together they brought over my g-mail stuff, ie addresses and such, but they did not load Thunderbird, so I did, but the e-mail address have not moved over no matter what you've told me to do. It did bring over the phone numbers and I really don't know where it got them, it would have to be off my cell, but I don't know. What am I messing up? thanks

What did BestBuy pull it together from? I admit, I have no idea why you just retrieved phone numbers.

They pulled it from my old hard drive. Would it hurt anything if I tried to pull it over again? Sorry to be a pain, but I thought it was all pulled, then I tried to send an e-mail and no addresses were there just phone numbers. Thoughts? Thanks

If you can locate an abook.sqlite file or an abook.mab file (older version) on your old laptop, we can easily import it to your thunderbird.

Yeah, that's a big problem. The old computer is pretty much froze, it's been sitting on all address books, etc for an hour or two. I was at least trying to pull them out of there. At this point my only hope is to enter them all my hand, and I'm sure not crazy about that. I want to use Thunderbird because the ease of the use of several address books, where g-mail does not seem to let me do that. Any other ideas? I do appreciate your help and I don't mean to be a royal pain. Thanks

One option might be to take to a computer repair shop to extract the files. Another might be to log onto your gmail account and check the contacts. If there are email addresses there, then something very unusual happened with setting it up with thunderbird. Another option there, assuming you have email addresses there, is to export from gmail. A website that explains the steps is at https://www.howtogeek.com/709323/how-to-export-contacts-in-gmail/ If you go this route and download a CSV file, it can be imported to thunderbird at tools>import>import from a file.

I figured what the heck do I have to loose, so I went to import and when the next screen popped up and I scrolled down to the bottom there was an excel file that said personal address book. I went back and looked it over first, but it looked good, so I gave it a shot, it brought that puppy in. Now, with that said, I will still have to walk through about 500 e-mails and edit or delete, but it beats the heck out of having to type in, oh, probably 300 addresses. So that kinda worked and made me a lot happier. Thanks for your help, it did help, just not 100%. You probably could have done it 100% if you were sitting at my computer, not guessing exactly what my screen would say. Thanks again, and once more Merry Christmas. I do appreciate you trying to help this old fart!!

That is great news. I was glad to assist. Be sure to backup. I do it regularly. Best way for me is the simple way: - exit Thunderbird - copy c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to a USB stick - to restore:

  1. install thunderbird, if necessary
  2. copy from USB stick to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming  (that will prompt for overwrite. Allow.)

And merry Christmas to you, too.  :)