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Why do my email addresses in my Address Book show up in red with quotation marks, slashes, and extra spaces that can't be sent: <" s *******##\"@gmail.com >

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Here are a few examples of the email addresses with errors in the address. These emails are not in my address book but are lingering in some other place in my computer. Thunderbird automatically inserts there emails in red with the quotation marks, slashes, and extra spaces when I begin typing in the persons email address. And sometimes the address changes to red. In either case, the emails addresses are not able to be sent. Thanks EX: <" s*******##\"@gmail.com > <"" Pr******\ "@ptd.net "> < " Har***** "@comcast.net> < ""mic**\ "@rcn.com ">

Here are a few examples of the email addresses with errors in the address. These emails are not in my address book but are lingering in some other place in my computer. Thunderbird automatically inserts there emails in red with the quotation marks, slashes, and extra spaces when I begin typing in the persons email address. And sometimes the address changes to red. In either case, the emails addresses are not able to be sent. Thanks EX: <" s*******##\"@gmail.com > <"" Pr******\ "@ptd.net "> < " Har***** "@comcast.net> < ""mic**\ "@rcn.com ">

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Does anyone have any ideas what causes that email address corruption in the above post

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Did you put the asterisks in?

Quotes are used when there are spaces, and the examples you have given all had leading spaces or maybe quotation marks in unusual places.

Your Address Book contains inner address books, such as Personal Address Book, which you are very likely using, and Collected Addresses, which many users don't seem to know about, along with any number of user-defined address books.

Go look for Collected Addresses. Or write an email using these strange addresses, save it as a Draft, then when you view it (in your Drafts folder), you'll be able to click on the addresses and Edit them, which will take you to whatever address book they were found in.

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I was able to save to the drafts folder. When I click on the email address in the drat folder I clicked on edit and there were no options or indication as to what folder this email address is located in. No, I did not change the email address other than changing the actual letter of the address to *'s for identity protection. I cam not finding the folder where these erroneous email address automatically come from. I do not have any email addresses in my Collected addresses in the address book. When i had the problem I saw the collected address folder and there were addresses in there I did not recognize and in no random order, so I deleted all of them as they were useless to me. But the problem still exists. I also got a message when opening Tunderbird. "Unable to load address book file abook.mab. It may be read-only, or locked by another application. Please try again later." OK Perhaps this is the corrupt folder. I do not know where it is located on my computer to edit it. Thank

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It's in your profile, which is hidden by default. Set your file manager to show hidden files and then you should be able to find abook.mab by searching for it. However, I wouldn't rate your chances of repairing it very highly. I've never been able to make much sense of the innards of address book files.