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Importing an Address Book

  • 7 replies
  • 18 have this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by BHerzog

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I exported several address books from different users in csv format and combined them in a spreadsheet format to sort and delete duplicates. After cleaning up the file I saved it as csv. However, TB wil not import the new file to an Address Book for me.

I exported several address books from different users in csv format and combined them in a spreadsheet format to sort and delete duplicates. After cleaning up the file I saved it as csv. However, TB wil not import the new file to an Address Book for me.

Chosen solution

I finally resolved the problem by opening the csv file in a text editor such as Notebook and saving it as type UTF-8 I was then able to import it back into TB. Apparently there was a problem with the csv format fro my spreadsheet.

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Well that is how it works. With no details provided I cannot guess what you are doing wrong. Watch this video and see if that helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Df8mRL3TBs

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I followed the instructions exactly and I have done it successfully in the past. However, this time there are no field names shown on the right as there should be. The field names are the same as originally exported from TB. Is it possible ther is a conflict with the old address books already in TB? I don't want to delete them until I have the new smaller combined version working.

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Delete a couple of the unused field names. IIRC Thunderbird exports one or two more fields than it can import and makes us all look bad.

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Thanks for the suggestion. I was all excited about trying it this morning. Unfortunately, it's not working for me.

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Chosen Solution

I finally resolved the problem by opening the csv file in a text editor such as Notebook and saving it as type UTF-8 I was then able to import it back into TB. Apparently there was a problem with the csv format fro my spreadsheet.

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Now this gets my attention. What format was the data in before?

I am wondering if it was actually in ascii in the first place and if Thunderbird generated such files. I Would llike to be able to duplicate your experience because it may be we have a bug ib there somewhere.

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I use Corel Office Products NOT MICROSOFT. I exported the file to csv format, opened it in QPro to clean it up. After doing that I saved it again to csv format. However, all attempts to re-import it failed until I remembered something I had read here or elsewhere about opening the file in a text editor and saving it to a UTF-8 encryption format. When I did that it worked perfectly. In the past the process had worked fine without inserting the extra step with the ext editor.