Thunderbird automatic Address Book BUP

ref.
Thunderbird 3.1.7

In case I have to do a drive image recovery after a system crash, I want to be able to automatically back up the Address Book periodically. How can I do it?

The problem is that the Address Book is stored in the Thunderbird Profiles folder as a MAB file, but it needs to be converted into a LDIF file format in order to be re-imported into Thunderbird, via the IMPORT command on the TOOLS menu. This conversion cannot be done automatically with any of the File BUP systems I tried, like Backup Maker or Handy BackUP, etc. . It has to be done manually. So I am back to square one. Unless there is a synchronization feature in Thunderbird like the one in Mozilla Firefox.

Can you help, please?

Thank you

Ittiandro

 

Thank you Tony.

This is not, however, what I want, because my intention was to do a fully automated BUP, without having to do any manual operations, such as the MAB to LDIF conversion.

I found, however, a solution, at least in theory: there is a Thunderbird ADDON called MOREFUNCTIONSFORADDRESSBOOK, downloadable from:

http://www.nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html

This addon allows to import a T.B. Address Book into T.B. directly from the MAB file format without having to prior export/save it as LDIF.

Unfortunately, it only works with the older version of Firefox and I cannot get it working with the latest 3.6.13.

THank you anyway

Franco

 

After reading the other postings, I am not sure I understand exactly what the situations is here but, I will tell Ittiandro and others what I would do to restore my TB address book after a crash and what I do to keep my computer backed up.

I use the program "Second Copy" and just as the name implies Second Copy simply makes another copy same as does Windows Explorer except 2nd Copy does it automatically and in the background.

Although you could have 2nd Copy make a copy of just the MAB file, In Ittiandro case I would not even be concerned with just the Address Book because I have 2nd Copy make a copy of my entire TB profile every 6 hours which is 3 times each day.

2nd Copy will copy the TB profile to any folder on any drive at any time.

2nd Copy runs in the background and you never know it is in operation unless you notice the spinning wheel on the task bar as it only copies the files that have changed.

2nd Copy is the best $29.95 I ever spent and after the OS I consider it the most important program on my computer.

2nd Copy will copy 1 file or 1 folder or all of them at any time to any location.

2nd Copy will restore the files but, I usually just use Windows Explorer because unlike most backup programs 2nd Copy is not required to do the restoring.

Additional Info is available at:.. www.secondcopy.com

My 2 Cents, Ray

 

maybe I don't understand exactly what you want, but just copy the files abook.mab and history.mab. When you want to recover them, close TB, and put the files back.