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What is the file in which address book resides?

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  • Last reply by Zenos

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My computer crashed but I have a carbonite backup. I am guessing that somewhere in my backup there will reside a file which contains my very lengthy address book which would otherwise be lost. Where is it and can it be easily read and imported into my new Thunderbird installation?

My computer crashed but I have a carbonite backup. I am guessing that somewhere in my backup there will reside a file which contains my very lengthy address book which would otherwise be lost. Where is it and can it be easily read and imported into my new Thunderbird installation?

Chosen solution

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

Note that it is hidden by default, so you are unlikely to stumble upon it in your file manager.

On a working system, Help|Troubleshooting Information will show you a button that opens your profile in your file manager. Admittedly, this isn't very helpful when you're looking for it in a backup or on a rescued HDD.

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You'd do better, IMHO, to rescue your entire profile rather than try to dissect it for contacts files. However....

Address book data is stored in files with a .mab extension.

abook.mab represents Personal Address Book history.mab represents Collected Addresses

These two can be just copied into another profile.

abook.mab files with numeric suffixes represent user-defined address books.

These must be imported. I use the MoreColumnsForAddressBook addon to do this.

Modified by Zenos

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OK, What and where is the profile file. I am perfectly willing to get that and import it.

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Chosen Solution

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

Note that it is hidden by default, so you are unlikely to stumble upon it in your file manager.

On a working system, Help|Troubleshooting Information will show you a button that opens your profile in your file manager. Admittedly, this isn't very helpful when you're looking for it in a backup or on a rescued HDD.

Modified by Zenos