How do I delete empty address book folders?
When Exporting and Importing my Collected and Personal Address folders, I first tried to Export and Import the top level "Address Book" folder No addresses were copied but it created new empty Collected and Personal Address folders on my new computer. Next, I Exported and Imported the individual Collected and Personal Address folders from my old computer to my new computer that uses Windows 10.
The problem is that my new computer now has two folders named Collected Addresses, an empty one with a capital "A" Address and another with a lower case "a" address, and two folders named Personal Address Book, one empty with a capital "B" Book and another with addresses that has a lower case "b" book in its name.
I have tried to delete the empty folders by selecting an empty one and going to Edit | Delete Address Book and left clicking on it, but nothing happens. The empty folder is not deleted. Thinking perhaps they had protected names, I tried to to change the empty folder names to different names but was unsuccessful in doing so. (I did successfully change the name of a group email address folder).
How can I delete the two empty address book folders? If that is not possible, then how can I change their names to "Empty" so I don't select them in the future? Thank you.
Réiteach roghnaithe
have you tried dragging them
or this add-om https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/morecols-en.html
The add-on provides an option to import and export the native MAB files. So you can replace one address book with another. No exporting and importing required.
so go to your old install and locate the abook.mab (personal address book) and History.mab (collected addresses) and either use the add-on or close Thunderbird and replace the empty with the full.
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copy your import to the "real" install created copy and delete he books you added.
HI Matt: Thank you for your suggestion but I cannot get it to work. I can Edit|Select All to highlight all the addresses in one of my Imported address books, but neither Edit|Copy nor Edit|Paste work on the ldif files, so I cannot copy and paste them into the "real" but empty Address files folders.
Even when I highlight a "real" Address folder and try to Import the address into that highlighted "real" folder list again, it simply creates another address book. This remains true after I changed the name of the address books to be Imported to exactly match the names of the existing but empty highlighted Address book folders. It again creates a new book having the same name as the existing empty book.
I can now Delete the address books I Imported which contain email addresses, but I cannot delete the empty but "real" file folders, which are protected by Thunderbird from being deleted accidentally or intentionally.
I'm thinking the only way to solve this problem is to Uninstall Thunderbird and download it anew, then carefully Export and Import only the separate address book file folders (but not their parent folder) into a fresh and clean Thunderbird on my Surface Pro 3.
Or I could simply learn to live with a few empty Address Book folders on my new computer. But then I imagine Thunderbird will put all new Collected Addresses into the "real" Collected Address book folder rather than into my Imported Collected Address book folders. I suppose none of this really matters if I learn to use only the parent All Address Books list for finding email addresses and ignore the sub folders.
Does anyone have any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Réiteach Roghnaithe
have you tried dragging them
or this add-om https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/morecols-en.html
The add-on provides an option to import and export the native MAB files. So you can replace one address book with another. No exporting and importing required.
so go to your old install and locate the abook.mab (personal address book) and History.mab (collected addresses) and either use the add-on or close Thunderbird and replace the empty with the full.
Hi Matt:
Dragging did the trick! I highlighted all email names and addresses in an Imported address book using Edit|Select All, then dragged the upper left hand corner of the highlighted area to the icon preceding the applicable "real" but empty Address book. Like magic the email names and addresses were moved to the applicable "real" folders, leaving the Imported folders empty. I then deleted the empty Imported folders. Hurray! Thanks so much for your spot-on suggestion, proving there is more than one way to pluck a Thunderbird. :)