Combining 2 e-mail "address books" in Thunderbird

trader

Valued Member
Greetings

Since setting up a new PC and transferring my e-mail address details from Outlook Express or it might have been Outlook, I now have 2 address books in Thunderbird. One is called Personal Address Book (Thunderbird) and the other is called "Contacts" - copied across from Outlook?
Is there any way that I can combine the 2 address books into just one, that is, Contacts into Personal Address Book.
I've tried copying but Thunderbird ignores this command, so I'm at a loose end. I would greatly appreciate any assistance re this matter. All new e-mail addresses are automatically recorded in the Thunderbird Personal Address Book.

Best regards
Trader
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Hi James,

Have you tried to export both of them, combine them, and then reimport them as a single address book?

-Raymond
 

trader

Valued Member
Greetings Raymond

I hope you are well, and thanks for your response. Sorry for being a bit dense but I don't really know how to go about this. Where would I export them to and how would I combine them once I had?

Best regards
James
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
If you go into the address book, you can then use Tools -> Export to export the address books.

Export both of them in comma separated format. It is not the default export type.

Open both of the CSV into your spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc and copy/paste them into the same sheet and save.

You can then import the new combined address book using Tool -> Import from your Thunderbird address book menu.

Once you are sure the new address looks good and there are no problems you can delete the original address books.

-Raymond
 

trader

Valued Member
Greetings Raymond

Thanks a million for your always amazing advice. It was quite an exercise but now all the addresses are combined in the one file within Thunderbird. Unfortunately, I made some kind of mistake when I was importing the new address book into Thunderbird and now I have 2 Personal...ssBook folders in Thunderbird. When I saved the amended book in Excel I misread the name and used capitals for the "ss" part of the name. I changed it within Thunderbird hoping a miracle might occur - I suppose it helps if you believe in such things - but there seems to be no way of deleting the original and now empty Personal...ssBook. I guess it doesn't really matter as long as Thunderbird doesn't start saving any new e-mail addresses in the empty folder - but, of course, it will. I did perform the import function within the Thunderbird Personal...ssBook but it would seem that, once again, I have performed another of my amazing feats of getting it wrong. Anyway, I'll try a few things and see how I get on. If you have a suggestion I would be delighted to hear from you.

Best regards
James
 
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