Moving address books between profiles

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The address books that you use with Thunderbird or Mozilla Suite are by default stored in your profile folder. The two default address books, called "Personal Address Book" and "Collected Addresses," are named "abook.mab" and "history.mab", respectively. Other address books that you create in addition to these will also be named with the ".mab" extension, such as "abook-1.mab" or "abook-2.mab".

Moving address books to another profile

The two default address books ("abook.mab" and "history.mab") can be copied directly from one profile folder to another. (This includes copying them from a Mozilla Suite profile or Netscape 7 profile to a Thunderbird profile.) Thunderbird will automatically recognize these address books when it starts up and you will be able to use them right away.

Other address books (such as "abook-1.mab") can not be copied from profile to profile in this way. To move these from one profile to another, you should first "export" each address book as as LDIF file and then "import" each address book into the other profile. To export an address book:

  • In the Address Book window, select the address book that you want to export.
  • Go to the "Tools" menu and select "Export...".
  • Enter a name for the address book, select "LDIF" from the drop-down list, choose where on your computer you want to save the address book, and then click to save the file.

Address books saved as LDIF files can later be imported into any Thunderbird profile by going to "Tools -> Import..." and then selecting the address book(s) you previously exported.

Recovering address books from a damaged profile

In the unfortunate event that your profile is damaged, it is possible to recover your address books, even if the profile itself is unusable. Of course you have made regular backups which you can simply import, but just in case you hadn't... read on.

First, copy the damaged profile, or at least the ".mab" files, to a safe place. Next, you will have to make a new profile, configure your accounts and preferences, etc. Start Thunderbird and go to the address book. Create some new address books ("File -> New -> Address Book"). Create as many address books as you had in the damaged profile, and give them names like "AB1", "AB2", ...

Now exit Thunderbird, and go to the new profile folder. You will see files with names like "abook-1.mab", "abook-2.mab", with small file sizes, because they are empty. Copy the saved ".mab" files from the old, damaged profile into the new profile. For each ".mab" file from the old profile, there should be a file with the same name in the new profile. If there isn't, rename the old file, giving it the name of a new file which is not used yet.

Start Thunderbird again, and go to the address book. If all is well, the newly created address books are filled with the contents of the old ones. You can now change the names "AB1", "AB2", ... into something more meaningful by right-clicking on each address book and choosing "Properties".

Of course, if your old address books have been damaged, this procedure will not help.

Backing up your address books

It is recommended that you regularly make backups of all your Thunderbird application data, including mail files, address books, and account settings, so that you can restore your complete profile(s) if it becomes necessary.

In addition, you may want to occasionally make separate backups of all your address books by exporting them as LDIF files. That way, if your address books ever happen to become corrupted, you will still have a separate backup that you can import into any Thunderbird profile. To do so, export each address book as an LDIF file using the procedure described above and then burn the LDIF files onto a CD-ROM or store them elsewhere for safekeeping.