Thunderbird Address book

Support & Help Requests
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I know, not a Ubuntu MATE question, but related. When I ran the 24.04 upgrade Thunderbird was replaced by a snap. I just found out today my address book is gone. Anyone know where the address book (or other Thunderbird data) is stored? I have full backups for prior to the upgrade

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I"m not a user of Thunderbird or its address book, but I understand there are two .mab files under your profile name. These are your address book and history files.

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For my Thunderbird (115.13.0, 64-bit) installation on UbuntuMATE 22.04.4, I see only the following:

   16016 Feb 14  2021 abook.mab.bak
  524288 Sep  3 18:49 abook.sqlite
  524288 Jan 31  2022 abook.v2.sqlite
  524288 Oct 14  2022 abook.v3.sqlite

   30822 Feb 25  2021 history.mab.bak
 1179648 Sep  3 18:49 history.sqlite
 1015808 Jan 31  2022 history.v2.sqlite
 1015808 Oct 14  2022 history.v3.sqlite

That tells me that Thunderbird has adopted the ".sqlite" format for both "Address Books"and "history", abandoning the "*.mab" format.

I think that if you transplant those 8 files, you will have restored that data.

I hope you have access to all your email folders. :slight_smile:

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4

yes when I updated last time my address book exported as a cvs file (which I still have). This time Thunderbird exported all settings as a zip file (Thunderbird_profile_backup.zip) so Thunderbird has made some serious changes.

Still the lesson is whether you do a fresh install or an upgrade, the back up should be the same. It took me almost two days to back up for this fresh install of 24.04.1.
Upgrades can sometimes go wrong.
My backups:
software installed
bookmarks
addons
passwords
address book
all data, documents, music, pictures, and videos
proprietary software (like for my Brother printer scanner)
anything else you can think of you don't want to lose!

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5

From my experience, it can take up to a week to fully "prep" for a fresh install but, over time, you evolve routines or scripts to "encapsulate" the workflow steps, so that there is knowledge of the process embedded in your own tools which, can reduce the time dedicated to that prep down to, as you experienced, 2 days, but it could become even less as you document/automate the steps. :slight_smile:

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6

On my earlier point, I invite you to look at this posting. :slight_smile:

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Eric, I am a 17 year user of Linux and have used Ubuntu Mate since it's first release and would have no idea where to look for those files. I am a casual user and pretty much a GUI guy. If I the terminal is needed I have cheat sheets or look up tutorials to copy and paste. I am a 17 year newbie. Where I can usually help is other newbies as I still think like one but have usually suffered through the same problems.
At this point I have no desire to learn more, but still want to help others when I can. I have come a long way since my first backup which included bookmarks and nothing else. I couldn't write a script to save my life. I do love Linux and Ubuntu Mate and this is the best forum in Linux land.

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