Are you using gContactSync or any other add-ons which manipulate your address book(s)?

Are all the addresses in one address book, or do you have several (e.g. gmail, Collected Addresses, etc.)? Are the corrupted addresses always in one particular address book?

Have never heard of GContactSync and am not aware of anything that manipulates my address book.

All my addressees are in one Address Book in Thunderbird. I have an additional TWO lists , one containing 24 of the people appearing on my main address book and the other list containing 10 people.

The 'corrupted' addresses are not corrupted per se. They are ADDITIONAL records containing a different 'name' derived from all the characters PRECEDING the '@' of that persons email address. e.g a record may be for Tom Mix whose email address is tom.mix@ntlworld.com. The spurious , additional record created by Thunderbird would be ... name (tom.mix) ... email address(tom.mix@ntlworld.com). These additonal spurious records are always in the main Thunderbird address book.

Hope that helps ............... but I need help ! Have you not heard before about this problem ?

TB's term "Address Book" is a little misleading in that it is an aggregate of several lists: 'Personal Address Book', 'Collected Addresses', and others you may have added. Apparently you have two such lists.

FYI, for people using Gmail, gContactSync is an add-on which will synchronize your address book with Google's Contacts.

1. Try running without add-ons. Help -> Restart with add-ons disabled.
2. Export each of your address lists to a file using LDIF. (Tools -> Export)
3. Use a text editor on each .ldif file to find any erroneous entries. The format is fairly obvious. Each entry starts with "dn: " and ends with a blank line. Delete the bad ones.
4. Go back to Address Book, select each list and delete it.
5. Import your edited .ldif files to recreate your address book.

Sorry but I found your reply totally misleading ! When you refer to 'TB' you presumably mean myself i.e Terry Dennis = TD do you ? Anyway , apart from that , I see 'Address Book' as separate from 'Personal Address Book , and 'Collected Addresses' Under the 'Address Book' main category , I have TWO additional address books or lists , each relating to the contents of my 'Address Book' I never use the 'Personal Address Book' , I do not use the 'Outlook Express Address Book' (why should I because I use Thunderbird) and I never use 'Collected Addresses'. I do not know what the THREE main address categories , apart from 'Address Book' , are for.

So , I have difficulty in understanding what your 5 points for action are going to achieve for me.

Why is it wrong for me to use 'Address Book' ONLY and have (at the moment ) two sub address books ?

Sorry for the shorthand; by TB I meant Thunderbird.

If you click the "Address Book" button OR Tools -> Address Book and then View -> Layout and make sure 'Directory pane' is checked, the left-hand pane will show a list containing 'Personal Address Book' and the others. The 'Outlook Express Address Book' is probably what you imported from Outlook. The other names are arbitrary (user's choice).

If your two lists under your 'Address Book' have the same name, you need to rename one of them.

The 'Collected Addresses' can be used as an option under Preferences -> Composition -> Addressing to add addressees when you send mail.

What I am suggesting you do in steps 2-5 is to save your current address information; edit the files to clean up any additional/garbage records; delete all entries in all your address books and sub-lists; and then load the 'cleaned up' addresses back. NOTE: whatever file name your .ldif file has will become the name of the address book when you import it. So you can either rename the file while you are working on it (but keep the .ldif extension) or rename the address book before or after you do the export/import.

What we want to achieve with this is a clean start with no other entries which might cause interference.

Why is it wrong for me to use 'Address Book' ONLY and have (at the moment ) two sub address books ?

There is nothing wrong with that. Any others can be deleted but you won't be able to delete 'Personal Address Book' (it's fixed).

Does this help?

OK. Most of that I now understand. Before I go on to do what you suggest , here are some other pieces of information for and some questions . 1. My 'Outllook Express Address Book' is empty. 2. You say "The 'Collected Addresses' can be used as an option under Preferences -> Composition -> Addressing to add addressees when you send mail." ......... I cannot see how to get these ! 3. Under my 'Address Book' , I have two sub-lists ... one called 'Ultimates' the other called 'Viejos Amigos'. I edit the 'Address Book' to delete the spurious entries which leaves 177 records and leave the 'Address Book'. When I go back in there , there are now 187 records ! 4. To compile the 'Ultimates' address list , I double click on the 'Ultimates' tab to bring up the 'Mailing List' and get each relevant name into the list. I then click 'OK' but the 'Mailing List' is not replicated into the Adress List of the Ultimates sub-list. The number enterd into the Mailing List is 24 and having clicked OK after entering the 24 names , the number in the Ultimates sub address list is 13 !!

When I follow your instructions , will this solve the problem ? .... and why ?

1) You may delete the 'Outllook Express Address Book'. 2) Preferences -> Composition -> Addressing check "Automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses to my ..." and select an address book (if you want that to happen). 3) When you follow the instructions, you should export your "Ultimates" list to create a file named "Ultimates.ldif"; and you should export your 'Viejos Amigos' address list to a create a file named "Viejos Amigos.ldif".

So, once you have exported those address books/lists, follow steps 3-5 to clean up all your addresses.

Let me know how it goes.

You still have not told me how to get to Preferences - Composition - Addressing !

What does the following mean ? "Automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses to my ..." and select an address book (if you want that to happen)." Why would you want this to happen ?

From the Tool bar click Edit, click Preferences, click Composition, click Addressing, check "Automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses to my:" and select an address book. This can be useful when you reply to someone who was not already in your address book. It automates the process of adding it. Even though the 'default' is "Collected Addresses", you can change it to any of your Address Book lists.

So have you tried to export and edit your address books yet? Do you need more detailed (step-by-step) instructions?

I don't seem to have Preferences as an item under Edit !!

I have exported my 'Ultimates' address book and have looked at the file using 'Notepad'. It is a load of gobbledy-gook but the indiviuals names seem to be there ! Don't quite know quite what I should be editing.

It seems as though there are some menu differences between the Windows version and the Linux version (which I use). So try this: click on the 3-bar menu icon near the upper right of your page; if you hover the mouse over "Preferences", you will get a list which includes "Preferences". Click that, and then click 'Composition', etc.

Here is an example from my "address book.ldif" file, showing what one entry produces:

dn: cn=BVS Solitaire,mail=support@bvssolitaire.com objectclass: top objectclass: person objectclass: organizationalPerson objectclass: inetOrgPerson objectclass: mozillaAbPersonAlpha cn: BVS Solitaire mail: support@bvssolitaire.com modifytimestamp: 1426519549

Each 'contact' produces an entry like that. Each begins with a line starting with "dn: cn=whatever.." and ending with one blank line. When you find one you don't want, delete the entire block. There may be several additional lines in there depending on addresses, phone numbers, etc. The last line of the file should be a blank.

Good so far?

He is a Windows user. It will be Options and not the MAC version Preferences. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Menu_differences_in_Windows,_Linux,_and_Mac

Thanks, Airmail. I was aware of some differences; it's good to have them documented. I use Ubuntu Linux.

added: So, Terry, it's Options -> Options rather than Preferences -> Preferences for you (and all Win users).

Thanks for all that , Duggabe ! Nearly there !....... (thank goodness I hear you say !)

I have exported , edited , deleted Ultimates & Viejos Amigos and imported the edited address books. All looks good ...... except I have now got Ultimates & Viejos Amigos as separate address books - i.e not as sub-address books of Main Address Book. So I cannot add another name , say to the Ultimates address book from the Main Address Book. Any suggestions ?

OK, let's recap. If you open the (top level) Address Book you should have 'Personal Address Book', 'Collected Addresses', 'Ultimates', and 'Viejos Amigos' lists. The Personal Address Book should be empty. The Collected Addresses should be empty. Ultimates and Viejos Amigos should have only the entries you want. In other words, everything clean. So you shouldn't get any wierd stuff any more :)

I'm not sure I see a need for having your two lists under another 'Address Book'. You can add/edit/delete contacts to either list, and you can drag a contact from one list to the other. Am I missing something?

I may not be explaining things right ! The 'Personal Address Book' that I have contains 70 records. I have never used this utility. It seems to have all-and-sundry email addresses and certainly not 'Personal' records like friends and family. You say it should be empty. What is it's use ? Should I keep it ? The 'Collected Addresses Book' contains 42 records which has wide ranging email addresses including family and friends. You say that this address book should also be empty so what is its use ? Should I keep it ? My 'Main Address Book' contains 175 records and is what I would consider to be all the email addresses of people that I keep in touch with. Previously , my Ultimates & Viejos Amigos lists were depicted as a sub-list of 'Main Address Book' and it was easy to double click on either of the two to in order to show their 'Mailing List' and , with the cursor on the next empty line , a move to enter the name of a person who appears in the Mail Address Book enables a drop-down list to appear from which you hit return and that persons name and email address is copied from the Main Address Book to the Ultimate or Viejos Amigos list. How else would you achieve this ? I may need to COPY one persons name from the Main Address Book to , say . the Ultimates list but I would never want to MOVE a persons name and email address from the Main Address Book to the Ultimates list !! Please try and answer the ALL questions that I have posed.

At least I am not getting any weird stuff any more !!

You are correct in that I did not have the complete picture. Let's see if we can take this in parts --

• The Personal Address Book is what the Thunderbird programmers expected people to use as their 'main' address book. If you have entries in there you want to keep, that's fine. I was just saying it should be empty because I thought we were "cleaning house" to establish a baseline.
• The Collected Addresses is for the function I mentioned earlier in this thread: to collect outgoing addresses. You may use that or not as you wish. Again, I was saying it should be empty because I thought we were "cleaning house" to establish a baseline.
• You can create your lists under your main address book from the "New List" button (upper left part of screen). You can then populate them from your imported 'Ultimates' and 'Viejos Amigos' lists.

If you have further "weird stuff", you may need to do the export/edit/import process on each of your address books so that you know it's all clean. At least you know how now!

Does this take care of what you wanted?

Sorry duggabe !

I am afraid that I need clarification about your last point about creating your lists under the main address book. I know how to export an address book , edit it and then import it. I know how to create a new List from the 'New List' button uinder the Main Address Book but I do not know how to populate it from the exported and edited .ldif file . Can you give simple step by step instructions  ? Assume , I have a Main Address Book with my 175 records , I have two sub-adress books (Ultimates & Viejos Amogos) which are empty. I have 3 .ldif edited files (Main Address , Ultimates & Viejos Amigos). How do I populate the two sub-address books from the two .ldif edited files ?

I hope this will be the last bit of the jigsaw !

Terry, Here are the steps to recreate what I think you had.

1. Go to Address Book
2. In the left (directory) pane, click on the Ultimates addresses you imported.
3. Left click once on one of the entries to highlight it.
4. Hold down the Control key and press A. All of the entries will be highlighted.
5. Left click and hold to drag all of the entries over to your Ultimates sub-list and let go.
6. All the entries should now be in your sub-list.
7. Repeat this process for your 'Viejos Amigos' addresses.
8. Once you have everything like you want it, you can delete the top level Ultimates and Viejos Amigos address books.

I went through these steps on my own address book and everything looked like it worked OK. Since I don't have any Viejos Amigos, I'll be deleting that list. ;)

Was this the last piece of the puzzle?

Duggabe

It was indeed the last bit in the puzzle ! Worked a treat ! I would like to thank you immensely for all that help and for being so patient with me ! How on earth did my address books and their relativity get so screwed up ? Anyway , the main thing is that I understand it all a lot better now and I know what to do if the same thing happens .......... I have many sheets of A4 with instructions and even prinouts of my .ldif files to remind me. I must say that apart from the help itself , it was the continual rapidity with which you came back to me that was the most impressive !!

Once again , many thanks.

Terry Dennis