Try the EmailAddressCrawler add-on.

Thank you for the suggestion, but I could not install email address crawler as it is not compatible with my version of TB, which is that latest I could find, 52 something.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the compatibility statements. Some time ago we stopped the automatic disabling of addons with each version update. Just try adding it. I have used this addon on a recent Thunderbird.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/installing-addon-thunderbird

Thunderbird 52.2.1 blocks the download.

I have the crawler add-on installed and working in all versions of TB, but that may be because I also have this add-on installed to avoid 'incompatibility' conflicts:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/checkcompatibility/

Thank you very much sfhowes I have made some progress. I now have compatibility checking disabled, and I have email address crawler installed, and when I right-click on an email folder there is an option to crawl for email addresses. So far so good. I started small to crawl my drafts folder (not many emails), and my address book popped up so I created a test folder 'crawled from drafts' but could not get anything further to happen. and I cannot find any kind of interface with the crawler except that crawl option in the context menu of an email folder. I am new to Thunderbird so might be missing something obvious.

It might want to you to select some messages to crawl over. Ctrl+a will select all messages in the folder.

I can't think of any reason why it might have trouble with the Drafts folder, but then again I can't recall trying to use the EAC addon on Drafts. Some tools refuse to work on so-called "special folders" but I don't think this includes Drafts. Have you tried it on any regular folders such as Inbox?

Thank you Zenos. I have now tried on an inbox sub-folder, then I tried on inbox, and I tried with files selected and unselected. All that happens is the address box pops up and there seems to be nothing clickable that looks like it might communicate with EAC.

Here's what I do:

1. Open the folder;
2. Select the messages;
3. Right-click, select "Crawl selected emails for email addresses";
4. Select which parts of the messages to search;
5. Choose a destination;
6. Curse because it doesn't let you create an address book on the fly;
7. Close it all, add the new address book;
8. Start again.

Nowhere do I see anything that sounds like "the address box pops up".

Note that just about everything in Thunderbird can be done via a right-click.

Thank you Zenos. I tried your method. What happens after I open the folder and select the messages is that I don't get a 'crawl selected messages' option on right click. No option mentions crawiling.

I can right click a folder, and get 'crawl folder for email addresses' and that's when the address book pops up without any further crawl options.

Thank you for your help.

What version of the add-on do you have? Version 3 from the AMO webpage is obsolete. Download version 5.1.2 from the author's site.

Thank you very much sfhowes and zenos. Email Address Crawler is working fine now. I did not know there was a later version to download. Excellent effort on your part thank you for sticking with it. Best wishes to you both.