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unable to load address book file abook.mab when I start Thunderbird

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  • Last reply by Matt

dej72
dej72
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I am running win10 and Thunderbird 38.5.1 when I open Thunderbird an error message is displayed saying windows is unable to load the address book file abook.mab because It may be read-only, or locked by another application. I believe this happened when I was setting up Gmail to be able to open all my email accounts. How do I restore my ability to open the address book when I am using Thunderbird.

I am running win10 and Thunderbird 38.5.1 when I open Thunderbird an error message is displayed saying windows is unable to load the address book file abook.mab because It may be read-only, or locked by another application. I believe this happened when I was setting up Gmail to be able to open all my email accounts. How do I restore my ability to open the address book when I am using Thunderbird.
Attached screenshots

Modified by dej72

All Replies (8)

Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
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does https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1082235 help?

dej72
dej72 Question owner
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Wayne Mery said

does https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1082235 help?

Wayne Mery, the URL you provided dealt with a problem with the imap.map file. My problem is not being able to open the abook.map when I start TB

dej72
dej72 Question owner
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dej72 said

Wayne Mery said
does https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1082235 help?

Wayne Mery, the URL you provided dealt with a problem with the imap.map file. My problem is not being able to open the abook.map when I start TB

Here is an image of the error message I am receiving.

Matt
Matt
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they are both address books files. Read between the lines. and rename yours.

dej72
dej72 Question owner
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I renamed my impab.mab file but still received the same error message when I started Thunderbird.

Matt
Matt
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hmmm your issue is with abook.mab.. so how about renaming the file your having issues with.

dej72
dej72 Question owner
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Matt, I had tried renaming the abook.mab before you suggested it and the result was that I couldn't open TB. This time I renamed every file abook.mab file I could find. When I restarted TB it opened without the error message. When I selected the address book tab icon the address book opened without the error message. So that issue seems to be resolved, however under All address Books there are three listed, Personal address book, Personal and Collected Addresses. There are no entries in the Personal address book. See the attached image I used to have entries in Personal address book and collected. What do you suggest I do at this point. Should I leave the abook.mab files remain with the name I changed them to?

Matt
Matt
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I get very nervous when 'i hear things like I renamed everything I could find. There is an abandon that oten leads to errors.

Clearly your abook.mab. The "personal address book was either corrupt or the file was read only. Only you can check the file to determine if the problem was that the file saw read only. But which one. You apparently found more than one.

I suggest you try the more functions for address book addon. See https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/morecols-en.html and try importing the renamed file using that tool.

Install instructions http://xenos-email-notes.simplesite.com/416814616