http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_address_books_between_profiles

Thanks for the information christ1. Unfortunately it did not help. I am not adding or changing profiles and I do not have the old computer. I expected that when I downloaded TB on the new computer, all the links and functionality for my account work continue on. As I said previously, everything is working fine except my address book has not appeared. I am 73 yrs and a 500 word treatise on the subject is more than I could decipher. I did click on the link 'morefunctionsforaddressbook' but that took me nowhere. When I tried to open the download, it referred me to googleplay which in this case was a dead end. I need something more straight forward please as I am not a techo. Regards, Chris

I expected that when I downloaded TB on the new computer, all the links and functionality for my account work continue on.

That expectation is wrong. What you should have done is creating a backup of your Thunderbird profile on the old computer. You could have then restored on the new computer, and you'd have everything as it was before.

As I said previously, everything is working fine except my address book has not appeared.

The reason you do see all your mail is because it's all on the server. Your address book is not, unless you did sync your contacts e.g. with Google Contacts. The Thunderbird Address Book is just local on your computer, and would need to be restored on the new computer. This is what the support article is about.

I do not have the old computer.

Then I'm afraid your contacts are gone, unless you still do have a backup of your Thunderbird profile from the old computer.

Make sure to create backups of your Thunderbird profile on a regular basis. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile

I did click on the link 'morefunctionsforaddressbook' but that took me nowhere.

There is nothing you can do without the actual address book file.

If you don't have the old address book but managed to restore the old messages, there is a way to scan the mail folders for email addresses and store them in an address book. Reply here if you want to go ahead with this option.

https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/index-en.html#eac

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

My address book is there in Gmail. I just can't get TB to pick it up.

Open the gmail account on the gmail website, open Contacts (under Google apps in the upper right corner), click More/Export..., select vCard format, Export the contacts.vcf file to your computer.

In TB, Tools/Import... Address books...vCard file... select contacts.vcf. A new address book now appears in Address Book.

chrisennor said

Just replaced my old computer with a new Win 10 pro , lenovo micro computer. I loaded latest version of TB. Everything works fine except my address book is not there. How can I get it? My mail is synchronised with Gmail.

sfhowes said

Open the gmail account on the gmail website, open Contacts (under Google apps in the upper right corner), click More/Export..., select vCard format, Export the contacts.vcf file to your computer. In TB, Tools/Import... Address books...vCard file... select contacts.vcf. A new address book now appears in Address Book.

Thank you! Most helpful. what I was doing wrong was exporting a csv. file because in the instructions beside vcf it indicates ios - which I took to mean Apple's operating system. One further refinement. Can I get rid of all the phone number entries from Gmail and just have email addresses?

If you exported the Google contacts as a csv, then opened the csv in a spreadsheet or csv editor, removed the phone number columns, saved the csv, it could then be imported to TB. But this is probably more trouble and time than just leaving the numbers in place. The phone number columns can be hidden in Address Book if desired.

Thanks sfhowes.

Yeah, The addresses come up when I write an email so that will be OK. FYI. On my laptop where I went straight to vcard format everything set up perfectly. On the desktop, where I had previously used csv format, it looks a mess but works OK. I tried uninstalling TB, shutting down the computer, then re-installing TB plus using vcard format. However I could not get rid of what was done with the csv format - even shutting down the computer for 15 mins, it still reverted. Anyway, that is a bit academic now as the system is functioning OK when I want to 

address emails. Thank you very much for your help and patience. Regards, Chris

If you imported a csv file that you wish to remove, it should be sufficient to delete the imported address book from Address Book, then add the contacts.vcf file as described above. The only address books that can't be removed this way are Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses. Note that contacts can be copied or moved between address books by drag and drop (hold Ctrl while dragging to copy, not move).