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3 Different Ways to Rebuild Thunderbird Address Book


Rebuild Thunderbird Address Book

Thunderbird email client application consists of two contact folders in it such as abook.mab and history.mab. Moreover, an address book in Mozilla Thunderbird is named with .mab extension. Here, consider the following scenario that helps the user to understand how to Rebuild Thunderbird Address Book very clearly:

“Due to some certain reasons, my contacts deleted or disappeared from Thunderbird profile. Then, I received an error message like ‘Unable to load address book file abook.mab. It may be read-only or locked by some other application. Please Try again later’. First, I cannot locate these MAB files and second thing, I am very helpless because it might seem hard to find the relevant solution for this problem. Kindly suggest me an efficient way, which can help me out!”

Now, in the following section, we are going to discuss three different ways to rebuild Thunderbird address book in a convenient way.

Reasons For Rebuilding Mozilla Thunderbird Contacts

After understanding the following scenario in which MAB file got corrupted. Now, we should know the need to restore the Thunderbird database, which is mentioned given below:

  • Damaged Profile of Mozilla Thunderbird: At times, users may perform the functioning with Thunderbird that can cause a negative impact on an application. One such effect is corrupt or damaged Thunderbird profiles, which can cause any harm to all mailbox items are saved in it.
  • Corruption in Thunderbird Address List: Due to virus attack or system may crash, so many files have become corrupted. Out all these data files, one would be MAB file, laterally can cause an error message while a user tries to open it.

Workarounds to Recover Thunderbird Address Book

The solution to getting rid of this situation is to repair Thunderbird address book because the contacts are stored in default user profile. Generally, there are three several ways to resolve this problem:

Way 1: Recover MAB files From Damaged Thunderbird profile

This approach is only applicable for those end users who take regular backup of Thunderbird mail client. Go through the following steps to perform the same:

  • Copy and Paste of each Thunderbird address book from the initial location to any other desired path of your local machine
  • Now, Launch Mozilla Thunderbird and then, set up a new mail account within it
  • Navigate to Address Book of Thunderbird application, select File tab and click the New button. Select an option Address Book Contact
  • Re-create the new contact list until the same number of all contacts are not reached that were available in the damaged profile
  • Exit the Thunderbird and then, go to the profile folder. Now, you will receive all MAB files i.e. abook1.mab, abook2.mab. Such profiles are empty, which can be copied in a new profile

Remember: Make sure that you have similar name of the old profile folder in another one

  • Again, launch the Thunderbird and then, click on the Address Book field
  • If everything goes well then, the newly created Address Book will get filled automatically with contents of the old one. Then, you can easily customize the name in such way according to your choice

Way 2: Rebuilt Corrupted Thunderbird Address Book & Extracting Data from it

When MAB file got corrupted then, such file names as abook.mab.bak. To resolve this issue by rebuilding Mozilla Thunderbird address book, follow these steps:

  • If it gets open then, close Mozilla Thunderbird application; otherwise, directly go to the specified location where your profile is being stored

Windows XP: C:\document and settings\*user name*\application data\Thunderbird\profiles\*random string.profilename*

Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10: C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\f6gm8qf5.default

Remember: Firstly, you have to set up Windows settings in order that all hidden files or folders are visible to the normal users

  • Open those file which has .mab.bak extension through Text Editor and afterward, delete all appended stuff within it
  • After deleting all data stuff, save the abook.mab file back to their original location

Way 3: Replace Thunderbird Contacts From Parent Profile to New one

There are following set of instructions to perform the same procedure:

  • Launch Mozilla Thunderbird where its parent profile is to be configured
  • Under Address Book section, navigate to address book file that you wish to export
  • Click the Tools option and press Export to continue further
  • Now, the Export Address Book screen will appear where you must have to specify the name of exported files and desirable location where you wish to store that file
  • Expand an option Save as type and choose LDIF option from it. In the end, click on Save to proceed forward
  • Next, move to some another profile where you want to switch an address book and now, import all the resultant files by selecting Tools menu. Click the Import, navigate to Address Book and go to the Next button for proceeding
  • From the current window, select one text file out of these i.e, LDIF, .tab, .cav, .txt options and then, click Next to move further
  • Choose a file from particular location where you have already located .ldif file and click Open to further continue

In last, all contacts are to be loaded in Mozilla Thunderbird and after that, you can access all data files without any complications.

Point to Remember: Users are strongly recommended that they must regularly take a complete backup of their profile containing emails, contacts, calendars, and so on. Because it is one of the most appropriate approaches to a disaster recovery for restoring the backup files.

Wrapping Up

All of sudden, users have accidentally deleted their contacts from Thunderbird application and they want to recover them back anyhow. Apart from this, we have discussed three foolproof approaches effortlessly to rebuild Thunderbird address book. Along with such methods, various reasons are also covered in above section.