So... what did you do on the latest update (102.6.1) that brought back my address book after it being missing 4-6 months? While it is nice to have it back, you now effed up all the new changes I have made to restore it. I DID, however, start backing up my address book before I allowed any updates, but you are really making this hard. Not only am I missing the new data, I also have back a bunch of old data that I deleted as I no longer need it. Plus there is also now no simple export to .csv like there was before the latest update. The default is .vcf, but if you want to export into .csv you have to what? select a whole bunch of fields first??? I'm not sure other than I exported the "new" old address book into .csv, Thunderbird said it exported 610 addresses, but looking at the spreadsheet it is empty. WTH?

It looks like this is a case where Thunderbird can't win for losing.

re : Plus there is also now no simple export to .csv like there was before the latest update.

It's still there - I just used it myself.

In Address Book

• Highlight the address book you want to export.
• click on the three dot icon which appears when you select the address book
• select 'Export' from drop down options

New window opens

• Choose where you want to save the file
• Use filename as suggested or edit
• Select the type of file from the 'Save as type' drop down - I selected 'Comma Separated (UTF-8)(*.csv)'
• Click on 'Save'

Where is the address book backup located?

In the 'profile name' folder:

• 'abook.sqlite' is the current file storing 'Personal Address Book'
• 'history.sqlite' is the current file storing 'Collected Addresses'
• Other files with a number eg: 'abook-1.sqlite' will be an address book you created.

'abook.sqlite.shm' and 'abook.sqlite.wal' are only visible if you have not exited Thunderbird and they are used as a temp store.

If you see files with a 'vnumber' eg: 'abook.v2.sqlite' and 'abook.v3.sqlite' these are backup files for the 'abook.sqlite'.

To use a backup: You should always exit Thunderbird before trying to copy any file or reinstate a backup. So if it is still running, please exit it now. This is an example of using a backup of the 'Personal Address Book'.

• Rename 'abook.sqlite' as 'abook.sqlite.bak' or 'abook.sqlite.old'
• Rename 'abook.v2.sqlite' as 'abook.sqlite'
• then start Thunderbird.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. In some kind of order, yes, those are the locations and names of the TB address book files. The short answer is that I found all that after a good number of searches including Reddit etc, but found those were still all the "old" address books (on my HD including old profiles, and every file I could find on backup drives etc). And, yes, the export to .csv is still there and what I was using to backup my TB address book during the numerous updates over the past few months in order not to "lose" my address book again.

Long story short, "my bad" as they say. I had forgotten that I used CardBook as my primary address book a couple of years ago. And what I didn't realize was that a TB update had broken Cardbook. All I knew was that all of a sudden I didn't have an address book, and when I went to find one the only one I had in TB was two years out of date. The developer only recently fixed CardBook to again work with the newer version of TB which is when I realized I now had my address book back. And CardBook is the one with the wonky export (versus the simple export to .csv in the native TB address book).

Anyway, my mistake, but I wish Mozilla would stop breaking extensions with every update. TB isn't bad, but Firefox seems to update weekly if not more often. And if anyone has been using Firefox for years and years you may remember that the entire selling point of using FF was the add-ons and extensions. But like most people I gave up on using most of them, and half the developers gave up fixing and updating them, because Mozilla was forever breaking them. I was down to using only the one extension on TB, and since I simply considered it my "address book" it never once occurred to me that it was the extension that stopped working and / or went missing.

Oh well, now that I know that I have all my data somewhere it is just a matter of morphing the two together as TB address book doesn't update fields in CardBook and vise verse.

Thunderbird does now offer in 'Address Book' under the 'New Address Book' button more options than before.

• New Address Book
• Add CardDav Address Book
• Add LDAP address book

The storage format has been changed from a Mork database (.mab) to SQLite database (.sqlite) Thunderbird Address Book now provides two views: Horizontal and Vertical, It's still undergoing refinements. Auto add Contacts have always been available in the Write window contacts sidebar and auto selection offered when creating invites in the Calendar.

In recent years, many addons have become defunct - not updated, but often Thunderbird has incorporated additional functionality, so the addons are not always required.