Compact address books

Miles

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Aug 9, 2012, 5:59:45 PM8/9/12

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On occasion I have deleted several addresses cards (contacts) from a
list only to discover that there are blank rows at the beginning of
the list -- sometimes so many that the list is not seen because the
first entry is below the bottom of the field and I think the list
contents has been lost.

Is there a way to compact the address books so that this will not occur?
Miles

Mike Easter

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Aug 9, 2012, 6:21:56 PM8/9/12

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Miles wrote:
> On occasion I have deleted several addresses cards (contacts) from a
> list only to discover that there are blank rows at the beginning of the
> list -- sometimes so many that the list is not seen because the first
> entry is below the bottom of the field and I think the list contents has
> been lost.

Disclaimer: I have never seen that effect and I have never 'invited'
that effect by deleting a bunch of addresses.

> Is there a way to compact the address books so that this will not occur?

This guy wrote an article about Tb's addressbook only growing, never
shrinking and how he solves the problem by a manual process of exporting
and importing to result in compacting. Kinda weird to me, but if it
works that would be a big improvement over large expanses of empty space.

http://tronprog.blogspot.com/2008/01/compacting-thunderbird-addressbook.html
Compacting Thunderbird Addressbook JANUARY 03, 2008

--
Mike Easter

Ron K.

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Aug 9, 2012, 8:18:34 PM8/9/12

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Mike Easter on 8/9/2012 6:21 PM, keyboarded a reply:

There has been a bug related to compacting. Seems the code had a very
high threshold for detecting need for compacting. IIRC there was work
done that landed a patch in a prior TB version.

--
Ron K.
Who is General Failure, and why is he searching my HDD?
Kernel Restore reported Major Error used BSOD to msg the enemy!

Miles

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Aug 10, 2012, 4:22:24 AM8/10/12

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* Mike Easter wrote, On 10-Aug-12 05:21:

Thanks, Mike, but I would be afraid to tinker with the address book
now since I've just completed syncing TB, GM, and Android -- which
took months! If you want to see me 1-page note on the pitfalls and
what to watch and how to correct, let me know.
Miles

Mike Easter

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Aug 10, 2012, 10:06:23 AM8/10/12

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Miles wrote:

> Thanks, Mike, but I would be afraid to tinker with the address book now
> since I've just completed syncing TB, GM, and Android -- which took
> months!

Of course it is easy enough to back up your current Tb as a .mab or
.ldif as he described in his article -- so if anything bad happened you
would have a copy of what Tb is now using.

> If you want to see me 1-page note on the pitfalls and what to watch
> and how to correct, let me know.

I think that would be a useful message to post.

The article I'm familiar with in the moz kb doesn't really fire me up

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_address_books Sharing address books

There's another that also doesn't

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Synchronizing_PDAs_and_phones Synchronizing
PDAs and phones

I'm familiar with OE's .wab, Tbird's .mab, and using .csv files to
import and export and Excel/Calc to tweak bent .csv, but that is about I
all know about the sync/ing you refer.

--
Mike Easter