Importing address book from Windows Live Mail 2011 - Unable to open Windows Live Mail Anymore
Does anyone know how I can import my address book from my Windows Live Mail 2011 email program into Thunderbird? My Windows Live Mail 2011 program stopped working so I can no longer open it in order to export my address book and save it as an .vcf file so I need to find a way to import my entire address book of 5,000 addresses into TB without a .vcf file.
All Replies (5)
On a Windows computer, there is a Contacts folder C:\Users\username\Contacts. Do you see your 5000 addresses in that folder? If so, you can select them all, then Export to vCards, which can be imported to TB.
Thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately, this method did not work.
I followed your instructions to the letter and when I selected the contacts icon and clicked export and then chose vCards I ended up with a file that is 75kb in size and when I imported that into TB there was one contact name, mine.
Do you have another method that I could try that might work?
Thanks.
Select all the .contact files in the Contacts folder, then Export, vCards, to save the multiple vCards. Follow the directions in my first reply to import them into TB.
Hello,
I followed your instructions to the letter and it did not work. You are simply reposting exactly what you wrote the first time.
I opened the contacts folder and in that folder there is one (1) icon which is my username, PGK. I selected that icon and then clicked on Export in the menu in that folder and I chose vCards and saved it in a new folder on my desktop.
When I opened that folder with the exported .vcf file there was one file 75kb in size.
I opened TB and imported that .vcf file and it added one contact to my address book, just me.
I think you did not read my original post closely.
I have all 5,000 of my contacts in the address book contained within the Windows Live Mail 2011 program that stopped working the other day.
All I need to know is how to extract the address book from Windows Live Mail 2011 and import that into TB WITHOUT opening Windows Live Mail because I can’t open that program and have tried everything which is why I am switching over to TB.
Thanks for any additional help you can provide.
Obviously, your 5000 WLM contacts are not in the Contacts folder, so you have to look for the Contacts.edb file that contains the WLM contacts. This is located in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\Default\15.5\DBStore, but you have to set the Explorer View options to show hidden files and folders, as well as protected operating system files. Then I suggest you use a program like LiveContactsView, mentioned here, to open the edb file and export it to a comma-separated values (csv) file. A csv file can be imported to TB, but you will probably want to first edit it in a spreadsheet to make the imported fields match the structure of the TB address book.