Copy imported email addresses from outlook express to personal address book
Doing conversions from XP to Win 7, 8, 8.1. Several times after importing Outlook Express .wab into Thunderbird in new Win versions, I tried to copy the contents to the Personal Address Book, but the resulting list stopped after the first group it encountered. I had to then copy all the addresses between each of the named groups. Then recreate the named groups which would not copy and install the related addresses into each one. I realize this is not a critical issue as Thunderbird finds addresses in any book listed, so I usually just rename the imported list to "Joe's address book" or something similar to keep my customers happy. Renaming each group starting with z1, z2... etc to put them at the bottom of the list works to make copying the whole list easier, but they still need to be recreated in the copied list.
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how are you doing the import?
Two things.
!. http://thunderbirdtweaks.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/windows-contacts.html
2. I can not figure a way to get the address book and Windows contacts with List to work together. They look ok in the address pane and work fine, but managing them in the address book is a nightmare, you just have to use windows contacts.
3. exporting from windows contacts as vcards and importing with this add-on https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/morecols-en.html might do a better job.
The addresses are imported directly from the XP address.wab file. There is no problem getting them into Thunderbird. They show as "Outlook Express Address Book", under the Personal Address Book and above the Collected Addresses. The problem occurs when I try to copy them from the imported "Outlook Express Address Book" into the Personal Address Book. There is no attempt to import them into Windows Contacts.
I don't have an old OE address book to play with (One crash to many)....Or a wab to import
but I can not reproduce that with a normal address book. Can you confirm it is only outlook express imported address books that are affected?
Ninety five percent of my customers are real estate agents. So have been hanging on to their 10-12 year old XPs. Ones with Outlook kept using it with the Win7 upgrades or new machines. I did import one Outlook.pst file with lots of grouped addresses recently while it was still on the XP machine and didn't have this problem with it. Copying the TBird profile to Win8.1 was not a problem. I suppose it is only characterized by OE and since OE is going away perhaps best to just forget the problem.