The emails sync flawlessly. But the contacts do not.

By default Thunderbird does have an Address Book called 'Personal Address Book'. Is this what you're using? Assuming you already populated the 'Personal Address Book' with a number of contacts, with what do you want want to sync them?

I'm looking at the list under All Address Books that populated when I added my 4 accounts to Thunderbird. In 1.jpg you'll see which fields TB used for the contact info: first name => email address part of address => Other Information Title email addresses => physical address

So using this contact can't be done because if I start to type in the name, TB wants to use "G.F. Lastname" as the email address then shows an error because its not an actual email address.

Then I noticed if I added a new contact using gmail webmail, that contact is not synced to TB. So what it looks like to me is: - TB imports all existing contacts in the gmail or outlook accounts, but does it wrong - does not continuously sync contacts if they are created using a different mail app or web app.

If I go and fix all the email addresses in TB, they do not show as changed in other apps. So it looks like TB addresses/contacts is a one time import and then completely independent and does not sync at all afterwards.

TB imports all existing contacts in the gmail or outlook accounts

No, it doesn't. If you want to sync your existing Google contacts with Thunderbird you'd have to create a new CardDAV address book for Google Contacts first. Thunderbird supports CardDAV natively, so no add-on is required. Open the Address Book tab. From the 'New Address Book' drop-down menu, select 'Add CardDAV Address Book'. For Username, enter your Gmail email address. Leave 'Location' blank, and continue. You'll be prompted for your Google credentials. Follow the prompts, and give the new address book a unique name, e.g. like 'Google Contacts'.

I have no idea about Outlook, but in general it would have work the same way.

How your contacts in the Thunderbird Address Book got populated in the first place, I don't know. And neither how they got garbled.

OK, thanks for your help. It just seems odd to me if I create contacts in gmail, outlook, or TB that the other software apps won't sync them. I run desktop computer (would prefer to use TB), an android phone (generally use Bluemail), and an ipad (native mail app) and it sounds like each need their own contacts list yet sync flawlessly emails.

I too don't know how TB got my contacts, but 71 of them appeared there in the Personal Address Book after I added the accounts.

The mismatch of contact data sounds like a poor import of Contacts from a CSV file. It may also be from may years ago if you have previously tried Thunderbird. Caldav sync including detecting contacts and calendars, is available at the time of account addition, under one of those handy ˅> things that hide details. Generally in my experience the option is hidden.

But I do understand your issue, and unfortunately I do not see things improving. Both Microsoft and Apple love having a walled garden where what they sell works flawlessly together and nothing else works at all.

There is a ratified global standard for contact exchange and syncing. it is called cardDav and Thunderbird supports it. So does Google and so does apple (despite you having to know that) I believe the URL you will need to use in the add address book to Thunderbird is https://contacts.icloud.com/

The outlier of Microsoft. They have their "people" thing and are essentially enforcing it. They just do not offer accepted standards as being required. Their sales to the converted makes it clear they do not. You do not implement their exchange active sync, you don't get to sync with their contacts.

So you can largely standardize on a single carddav source for all things not Microsoft and it will work out. Be that Google, iCloud or one of the other carddav providers. You will just have to actively decide to use that contact provider and none other.

Thanks. I can confirm I did not do a CSV import. I did realize the messed contacts were the ones from the Outlook.com account and no contacts came in from the 3 gmail accounts. So I did a full uninstall and clean install of TB 115 (was using 116b) and re-added the 4 accounts. So far nothing in the address books so likely operator error when I added the outlook account originally.

Thanks for the cardDav info. I will study up more on this.

Hello,

I have the same issue as bbawt1 and I therefore followed the configuration procedure explained above by Chris1 to install/configure CarDAV. It works form me: It does seem to provide me with my google contact list which, for the sake of my explanation below, I named MichelGooglecontacts.

Now as a follow on question if I may: can I configure Thunderbird so that the new contacts, that I obtain while using Thunderbird, be added only to MichelGooglecontacts since I do not wish to have multiple contact lists to manage ? Further will these added contacts to MichelGooglecontacts be automatically added/sync to my contact list whithin my google «universe» (gmail, contacts, keep, etc)?

Many thanks for your useful explanations. -Michel G.

guimmich,

you're posting to someone else topic. Please start a new topic for your question. https://support.mozilla.org/questions/new