How do you import WAB address books into Thunderbird?

[Mini-Me]

As per the thread topic...

I have tried to import, but TB just says it cannot find any address books.

I do not have Outlook Express installed at all, and TB DOES NOT give me the option of browsing for the WAB file...

I have the WAB file ready to go, but TB won't let me point it to it.
:(

Can anyone help me?

[Sylvander]

Here's what I tried just now:

1. Navigated to the .wab file, right-clicked and chose Open [the default action in heavy black].

2. The Windows Address Book was opened and displayed.
My Avira antivirus prog warned me that Outlook Express wanted to open this and I gave it the OK.
I have OE installed; don't know what your PC will do since you don't have OE installed.

3.
(a) Here's the Address Book help on the topic:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To export your address book contacts to other programs
You can export your address book contacts to other Windows Address Book files (WAB), as well as to Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book, or any text (CSV) file.

To export your address book files to another Windows Address Book:

In Address Book, click the File menu, point to Export, and then click Address Book (WAB).

Locate and select the Windows Address Book file you want to export to, and then click Open.

For all other address book formats:

In the Address Book, click the File menu, point to Export, and then click Other Address Book.

Click the address book or file type you want to export to, and then click Export.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I used the "Other Address Book" instructions.

(b) Exported to a csv file I named WAB.csv and specified the fields to export.
I can view the [text] contents of the resultant file using Wordpad.

(c) PROBLEM:
I tried this previously, and imported the csv file into Thunderbird running within BoxPup Linux [a Puppy Linux puplet], but the results were so poor as to be unusable.
I gave up on that attempt.

[Mini-Me]

I used most of your quoted instructions and it worked beautifully.
:)
(using another XP machine that DID have Outlook Express on it, so I could open the WAB files...)

All I did different, was when exporting the WAB to a CSV file, I unticked all the extra fields, so that all Outlook Express was exporting, was the name and e-mail address, as that is all I wanted.

That done, I then imported into TB by also unticking all the fields except first-name and primary e-mail address. I used the move up and move down buttons, to move the primary e-mail address field up to the second field to be imported, and that then correctly imported the name into the name column, and the e-mail address into the primary e-mail column.

Thanks for the pointers.
:)

[Sylvander]

Nice to hear it worked so well and easily. :D :cool: