This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Thunderbird 78.10.1 Address book Management - addresses held in 'mail' appear to be write locked.

  • 3 iimpendulo
  • 2 inale ngxaki
  • 21 views
  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu sfhowes

more options

I wish to remove old addresses from my address book. I have looked in there and found the required entry which is under All Address Book > Mail selected it and then right clicked and chosen delete from the list A poop-up appears Delete Contact are you sure you want to delete this contact . "Fred Bloggs" clicked OK and absolutely nothing happens!

If I attempt to edit an entry, the edit box appears, however I can not alter anything. Something appears to be write locking the address book. Entries in other address books I can alter, such as my gmail.com address book, and collected addresses. Could someone point me in the correct direction to fix this please, -- Ta Ian Mac

I wish to remove old addresses from my address book. I have looked in there and found the required entry which is under All Address Book > Mail selected it and then right clicked and chosen delete from the list A poop-up appears Delete Contact are you sure you want to delete this contact . "Fred Bloggs" clicked OK and absolutely nothing happens! If I attempt to edit an entry, the edit box appears, however I can not alter anything. Something appears to be write locking the address book. Entries in other address books I can alter, such as my gmail.com address book, and collected addresses. Could someone point me in the correct direction to fix this please, -- Ta Ian Mac

All Replies (3)

more options

If an address book becomes corrupted, it doesn't accept new contacts or changes to existing ones. First, don't perform edits from All Address Books, as it is just a search result, not a regular address book. If Personal Address Book is the one that can't be edited, export it to LDIF format, from Tools/Export, then open the profile folder from Help/Troubleshooting, Profile Folder, close TB, rename abook.sqlite to abook.sqlite.bak, restart TB, import the LDIF file, move the contacts in the imported address book to Personal Address Book by drag and drop.

more options

I have the same problem. All my contacts are in the Mac OS X adress book. I can't edit or delete. When I try to import my adress book from Outlook TB just crashes and I have to install it again

more options

postmannen58 said

I have the same problem. All my contacts are in the Mac OS X adress book. I can't edit or delete. When I try to import my adress book from Outlook TB just crashes and I have to install it again

TB only has read access to the OS X address book. How are you importing the Outlook contacts, as a csv or vcf file?