If you have a profile backup, copy abook.sqlite (Personal Address Book) and history.sqlite (Collected Addresses) into the current profile. It should also work if you have .mab files of the same names. Gmail contacts can be added to TB by syncing with the gmail Contacts, if you stilll have the gmail account.

I have all of these in but the profile does not detect any of them.

Let's back up a bit.... You said "I have had to reinstall Thunderbird 78.13 on my laptop" Can you explain why you uninstalled Thunderbird? Did you need to reinstall/fix Windows 10 OS ?

Before....Did you create a backup of this 'Thunderbird' folder? C://Users/username/Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird folder

If you had to fix OS, Windows usually creates a 'windows.old' folder and puts it in C: drive. That 'windows.old' folders should have a copy of the original 'Thunderbird' folder. If yes, you see 'windows.old' Access 'windows.old' and locate C://Users/username/Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird folder and copy that 'Thunderbird' folder.

Exit Thunderbird if it is running and access : C://Users/username/Appdata/Roaming folder Delete the current 'Thunderbird' folder and then paste the copied 'Thunderbird' folder into 'Roaming' folder.

Then start Thunderbird.

Did that work?

Yes I had to reinstall the OS. But this was done by an outside consultant. There is no "windows old" folder, but I had backed up the the Thunderbird profiles (I have more than one). I also created separate folders for them not the C://Users/username/Appdata/Roaming/Thunderbird folder. The backup has the all the data and when I reinstall it has the old emails, messae filters etc. Only issue is the address books are not detected. Anyway I just downloaded the gmail contacts and imported them.

Thank you for your help.