Address Book Bulk Adding

[jonathon]

All:

Is there a way to add 20+ contacts to an address book, in one operation?

I couldn't find anything, but my Google-Fu is getting worse, as I get older.

jonathon

["\"Re...@home.com]

In TB, Select "Address Book", select Tools, select Import

See if that works for you

[jonathon]

On 4/7/20 9:00 PM, "Retired" wrote:
> On 4/7/20 4:37 PM, jonathon wrote:

> In TB, Select "Address Book", select Tools, select Import
>
> See if that works for you

Reformatted my list (email addresses only) to CSV,
Selected import CSV;
Unchecked a lot of boxes.
Arrowed up primary email address,
and it worked. :)
Thanks.

#####

Am I the only person that finds it odd, that Thunderbird can't import
existing Thunderbird Address Books?
IMNSHO, the current address book format should be scrapped, and replaced
with an SQLite database.

jonathon

[😉 Good Guy 😉]

What information have you got in the address book?   If it is simple then you can simply enter them in excel spreadsheet and then save as .csv file.  For example create the headings such as:

First Name   
Last Name   
Display Name   
Nickname   
Primary Email

The file can then be imported into the address book.

Put those labels in the first row and all your details in subsequent rows.

The other columns are:
Secondary Email   
Screen Name   
Work Phone   
Home Phone   
Fax Number   
Pager Number   
Mobile Number  
Home Address   
Home Address 2   
Home City   
Home County   
Home Post Code   
Home Country   
Work Address   
Work Address 2   
Work City   
Work County   
Work Post Code   
Work Country   
Job Title   
Department   
Organisation   
Web Page 1   
Web Page 2   
Birth Year   
Birth Month   
Birth Day   
Custom 1   
Custom 2   
Custom 3   
Custom 4   
Notes

--

With over 1.2 billion devices now running Windows 10, customer satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

[WaltS48]

On 4/7/20 5:02 PM, 😉 Good Guy 😉 wrote:
> On 07/04/2020 21:37, jonathon wrote:
>> All:
>>
>> Is there a way to add 20+ contacts to an address book, in one operation?
>>
>> I couldn't find anything, but my Google-Fu is getting worse, as I get older.
>>
>> jonathon
> What information have you got in the address book?   If it is simple
> then you can simply enter them in excel spreadsheet and then save as
> .csv file.  For example create the headings such as:
>
> First Name
> Last Name
> Display Name
> Nickname
> Primary Email
>
> The file can then be imported into the address book.
>

If they are going to do that, why not just add new contacts to a
Thunderbird address book?

It is what I would do if I have to type the information.

--
OS: Ubuntu Linux 18.04LTS - Gnome Desktop
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/
https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/

[WaltS48]

I haven't had any problem importing existing address books that I have
exported from one version of Thunderbird into another version.

I export to an .ldif file.

[Grant Taylor]

On 4/7/20 6:33 PM, WaltS48 wrote:
> If they are going to do that, why not just add new contacts to a
> Thunderbird address book?

Efficiency of the spreadsheet interface vs going through the motions for
each address in the Address Book UI.

> It is what I would do if I have to type the information.

It's a numbers game. How much faster is it to enter each record when
shifting between cells of a spreadsheet vs the Address Book UI. Are you
doing enough addresses that the gain overcomes the overhead of importing
a CSV.

If you're the poor sod that has to type in 1,000 records, chances are
good that the CSV will be faster. If you're doing 20, maybe, maybe not.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Grant Taylor]

On 4/7/20 6:36 PM, WaltS48 wrote:
> I haven't had any problem importing existing address books that I have
> exported from one version of Thunderbird into another version.
>
> I export to an .ldif file.

an LDAP Data Interchange Format file is not an address book per say.
Rather is is a file, much like a CSV, that contains information germane
to an address book.

It's been a LONG time, but I was able to open, not import, address books by:

1) Create a new address book with the same name as the old one.
2) Close Thunderbird.
3) Overwrite the new / empty address book file(s) with the old / full
address book file(s).
4) Open Thunderbird & use the address book.

[jonathon]

On 4/8/20 12:36 AM, WaltS48 wrote:
> I haven't had any problem importing existing address books that I have
> exported from one version of Thunderbird into another version.

Thing is, I kept them in MAB format.

jonathon

[WaltS48]

I'm on Linux and don't see .mab as an option to "Save as" when exporting
an address book.

Hope everything works out for you.

[WaltS48]

On 4/7/20 6:48 PM, jonathon wrote:

> Am I the only person that finds it odd, that Thunderbird can't import
> existing Thunderbird Address Books?
> IMNSHO, the current address book format should be scrapped, and replaced
> with an SQLite database.
>
> jonathon

That's in the plans and implemented in 75.0b3. May have been earlier.

[WaltS48]

On 4/7/20 6:48 PM, jonathon wrote:

> IMNSHO, the current address book format should be scrapped, and replaced
> with an SQLite database.

"Address books are now stored as SQLite databases. Existing address
books in MAB format (using a Mork database) will be converted."

REF: <https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/71.0beta/releasenotes/>

[jonathon]

On 4/8/20 10:48 PM, WaltS48 wrote:
> On 4/7/20 6:48 PM, jonathon wrote:

>> Am I the only person that finds it odd, that Thunderbird can't import
>> existing Thunderbird Address Books?
>> IMNSHO, the current address book format should be scrapped, and replaced
>> with an SQLite database.
>>
>> jonathon
>

> That's in the plans and implemented in 75.0b3. May have been earlier.

I am on 68.6.0.
I _think_ I'm relying on the distro to provide current updates.

jonathon

[jonathon]

On 4/8/20 3:58 AM, Grant Taylor via support-thunderbird wrote:
> On 4/7/20 6:36 PM, WaltS48 wrote:

>> I haven't had any problem importing existing address books that I have
>> exported from one version of Thunderbird into another version.
>>
>> I export to an .ldif file.
>

> an LDAP Data Interchange Format file is not an address book per say.
> Rather is is a file, much like a CSV, that contains information germane
> to an address book.
>
> It's been a LONG time, but I was able to open, not import, address books
> by:
>
> 1)  Create a new address book with the same name as the old one.
> 2)  Close Thunderbird.
> 3)  Overwrite the new / empty address book file(s) with the old / full
> address book file(s).
> 4)  Open Thunderbird & use the address book.

Thanks.
I hadn't thought of that possibility.
So what I did was created 40 dummy addressbooks.
Closed Thunderbird
Renamed the mab files to the name of the 40.
Opened thunderbird
Moved the contacts from the 40 dummy books to the current, current
addressbooks.
Ran "remove duplicates", without looking at what I was deleting.
Oops. It removes duplicate names, not duplicate email addresses. :(
Anyway, I have 200 or so mabs to transfer over, so I'm hoping I didn't
lose too many contacts.

jonathon

[WaltS48]

No new features until the next major release which should be 78.0.

Thunderbird 68.7.0 was released yesterday.

<https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/68.7.0/releasenotes/>