Find Thunderbird Address Book Location on Your System Quickly
Most used email client all over the world is Mozilla Thunderbird, as it’s free, open-source and mainly used to manage emails, contacts, and calendars. It also stores emails and saves contacts on your computer. But most users often think that the Thunderbird address book location is, so they can easily manage them by taking a backup, exporting, or restoring their saved contacts.
So, in this detailed article, we’ll explain how you can find your Thunderbird contacts location, which is stored in a different corner of your operating system. Also, we’ll effectively discover how you can safely back up your contacts, including OS paths and file formats.
Why Knowing Thunderbird Address Book Location Is Important?
There are many reasons where locating the Thunderbird contacts file location becomes important:
- Migration: Transferring Thunderbird data to a different OS or computer.
- Backup: To store a safe copy of your contacts.
- Restoring: After deletion or file corruption, recovering your contacts is necessary.
- Syncing: Sharing your address book multiple times with many Thunderbird users.
Learning where the Mozilla Thunderbird address book file location is stored allows you full control over the data file.
How Thunderbird Saves Address Book Files?
Thunderbird stores the contacts in the profile folder, which also saves emails, configuration, and settings. But, in a dynamic world, Thunderbird has also changed its storage format.
In Older Version ( Before 78 Version)
- Contacts saved in MAB file format
- abook.mab, which is for a personal contact book.
- history.mab, which is for addresses that have already been collected.
In Latest Version ( 78 and Newer Versions)
- Now, Contacts are stored in SQLite database files.
- abook.sqlite, same for personal address book.
- history.sqlite, for collected contacts.
So, if you’re looking for Thunderbird address book location, then you may find it in MAB or SQLite formats, which might depend on your Thunderbird version.
Thunderbird Contacts File Location by Operating System
Thunderbird is compatible with Windows, macOS and many other systems. Every os has different paths of profile folder where all contacts are stored.
- Thunderbird Address Book File Location on Windows
Contacts are saved inside the profile folder on Windows system.
For example:
Under this, you may find the file formats according to your Thunderbird version, such as abook.sqlite, history.sqlite, or mab if previous version.
- Thunderbird Contacts Location on macOS
On macOS, contacts are stored under the Library directory.
For example:
Here, you will find the same files as abook.sqlite and history.sqlite.
How to Find Thunderbird Address Book Location?
You can locate it by using both manual and automated methods:
- Manually Locate this Contact Book
- Using Best Automated Solution for Locating Address Book
Let’s explore by understanding their steps:
Manual Way to Access Thunderbird Contacts File Location
You can easily locate by using these steps:
- Launch Thunderbird
- Navigate to Help > More Troubleshooting Information
- Search for Profile Folder section.
- Tap on Open Folder to view files.
- Find for abook.sqlite or history.sqlite.
Using manual methods might be problematic for some casual users if they don’t have technical skills and the path is very deep inside hidden folders in the system. So we recommend that you choose an automated solution.
Automated Method to Find Thunderbird Address Book Location
If you don’t want to identify your contacts in hidden folders without facing any challenges, we suggest using SysTools Thunderbird Store Locator, which is an effective solution that automates scans of your system and quickly finds the Thunderbird contacts file location. Here are some features of this alternative software.
Key Benefits of the Aforementioned Professional Tool
- It quickly detects the profile folder saved on your operating system
- Compatible with previous versions of Windows.
- Provides all details by default according to your computer.
- Also, offers Copy and Save Selected Folders to store data at a secure location.
- Saves our time as well as effort, which prevents the risk of accidental deletion.
- Useful for both non-tech and technical users.
Steps for Operating this Procative Utility
- Launch the recommended Locating tool on your system
- Choose the Necessary Folders, then click on Copy option.
- After pressing the copy button, tap on OK on the pop-up of completion of copying.
- Tap on CSV to store the information of the located loder into a CSV file format.
- Browse your destination to save the details in csv file.
- Finally, your CSV file is saved, and now you can check by navigating to your desired location.
Issues Faced When Locating Thunderbird Address Book
Most users face problems related to storing contacts, like:
- Contacts are not displayed after the migration process.
- Multiple profiles will surely create challenges, like which is the correct file.
- Risk of accidental loss or the file being corrupted.
In those cases, restoring from a backup taken from a trusted tool that allows us to quickly identify the path correctly.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve explained how efficiently you can detect your Thunderbird address book location using manual and the best automated solution, whether you’re using macOS or Windows. You can manually go to hidden folders, but it’s a time-consuming process, so we recommend using a professional, trusted, reliable, & safe tool that helps you to instantly detect the Mozilla Thunderbird contacts file location without learning any technical skills.