Thunderbird address book - copy to another computer
 

I've just installed Ubuntu 16 on a different computer. I've set up Thunderbird for email on this computer and would like to copy the address book from the old one to this one. I am guessing the simplest thing to do is to copy the address book from one computer to the other as I've done in Windows in the past, but I can't find the address book to copy.

My question is, which file in Thunderbird contains the address book?

p.s. I am not familiar enough with the command line/terminal window to do much with that. I'd like to search for the file, find it and copy it to a thumb drive, then copy it to the new computer.

I have downloaded and installed the 'addressbooks synchronizer' on both computers (as per the answer to someone else's question) but it did not import/synchronize them.

It's the file abook.mab inside the ~/.thunderbird/<some random string>/ directory
You can export the abook in csv form, from one client and import it to the other.

Regards

followup - how do I find "abook.mab inside the ~/.thunderbird/<some random string>/ directory" I searched using the 'search your computer' for abook.mab and it said there is nothing that matches my search.

I opened a terminal window and entered ~./thunderbird/ and got a reply that it was a directory. I then tried ~./thunderbird/abook.mab and it said no such directory - which I understand since it is a file, but how to I find it to copy it?

There is a subdirectory under ~/.thunderbird where thunderbird strores its files
From inside your homedir you can use the follwoing to find the exact file location:

You could try

bathory - I did as you suggested and it did come back with a random string. How do I copy the abook.mab file to my thumb drive now that I know where it is?

spiky0011 - since bathory's reply was first, I did not get to your suggestion, but I appreciate it.

Thanks to both of you.

p.s. terminal windows are tough - first time I used a F instead of f and it gave me holy hell instead of an answer.

pp.ss. after using spiky0011's suggestion I find my self inside the ~/.thunderbird directory-at least that is what the prompt says now, but I still do not know how to copy the file.

I'm not using Ubuntu, but once you insert the usb stick. it's automatically mounted, so you can use the Ubuntu file manager (Nautilus) to copy the file you want in the flash drive using your mouse

Irish666

yes but alot of help will be given using terminal it would be good to learn some/alot

http://www.howtogeek.com/140679/begi...inux-terminal/

and plenty of others on google

Not knocking you as a beginner

Irish666,

You need to access the .thunderbird folder on the original hard drive.

Open the Home folder on that drive, View > Show Hidden Files > open the .thunderbird folder.

Then copy the abcd1234.default folder to a USB stick or similar.

On the new computer, click on Thunderbird to open it and then immediately close it.

The copied profile folder must then be pasted inside the NEW .thunderbird folder on the Home folder of the new hard drive.

Assuming that your new default folder is wxyz5678.default , the existing profiles.ini file should be modified and then saved as follows:

When you reopen Thunderbird, all your old email accounts, emails and address books etc will be there as usual.

Gentlemen, thanks for your attempts to help. I only have about 200 email addresses to copy and I could have done it manually two times in the time I've spent trying to figure it out.

For what its worth, sometimes people who thoroughly understand the process don't realize what they leave out when providing instructions. I have even gone to the Beginner Geek site and found the instructions there to be incomplete. It is hard to explain something to a novice that is so obvious to the explainer, but such is life.

Now I'm going to copy each address one at a time and get it done before my whole day is wasted. ;-)


I really do appreciate your help - THANK YOU

Tom

Directories and files that begin with a dot are not normally displayed in a file manager. In nautilus you must enable "show hidden files".

When I went looking for Nautilus and could not find it on my computer, the Internet led me to GNOME, saying that had replaced it. That is when I gave up.

Meanwhile I wonder which kind I am?????

You've invested a lot of time and effort into learning Windows over the years. You'll have to invest some time and effort into learning Linux. Linux is not Windows. Learning how to do the copy operations in Linux is worth the time and effort, and much better spent than entering data by hand. You're running Ubuntu, and I assume with the Trinity desktop environment. I've avoided that at all costs, so I can't help much with the GUI portion of Ubuntu. But the terminal is the same in all distros, and now even in Windows, since Microsoft started incorporating the bash shell into it. Learning bash commands is time well spent. Many things are far faster and easier to do in a terminal than a GUI. But again, it takes some time to learn how to do things in any new operating system. I advise you to bite the bullet and spend the time and effort, and you will be well rewarded in the long run.

Thank you sgosnell for your words of wisdom.

I've dreaded every change as it came along. I stayed with Commodore once I learned Basic to avoid learning DOS, I finally bit that bullet and then dreaded learning windows. I waited until Windows 95 to start it. Every upgrade of windows has been painful - one of the reasons I'm determined to dump it. So I will spend time in the terminal :-) The price of progress!

Irish666,

Take things one step at a time.

Here is a video tutorial for Ubuntu 14.04 with the Unity desktop:

http://drilix.com/en/tutorial/ubuntu...inner-tutorial