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  • 04:52:32 pm on January 11, 2011 | # | Comments Off on Move Address Books from Thunderbird to Zimbra
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    Export Your Address Book from Thunderbird

    Thunderbird will work with Zimbra just as it did with our previous email system.

    If you should decide to stop using Thunderbird and switch to Zimbra, you can export your Thunderbird address book into a .CSV file that can be used to populate your addressbook in Zimbra. Follow these instructions or put in a Help Desk ticket for assistance.

    1. Open Thunderbird’s Address Book
    2. Select the address book (‘Personal Address Book’ or any others you may have created) from the list on the left.
    3. Go to the Tools menu and choose Export
    4. In the window that pops up:
      1. Save As: Thunderbird-contacts.csv.
      2. Where: Desktop
      3. Format: Comma Separated
      4. Click ‘Save’
    5. Repeat this process as necessary for additional address books listed on the left (step #2), should there be any.

    NOTE: The export process from Thunderbird will NOT contain your groups or lists, just the individual contacts. If you need to maintain the integrity of groups or lists, consider selecting groups or lists one at a time (in step #2) and exporting them independently of each other. Be sure to give them good, distinguishable names when you save them to your desktop. Then when you bring them into Zimbra or any other address book tool, you can import them group-by-group and manage the “re-grouping” of them in a more orderly fashion.

    Import Your Address Book (.csv) Into Zimbra

    Following are instructions for migrating your Address Book to the LPS Zimbra server.

    1. Log into your LPS Zimbra email account and select the ‘Preferences‘ tab in the top row.
    2. Select ‘Import/Export‘ from the options on the left
    3. Click the ‘Choose File‘ button in the ‘Import’ section of the window. This will prompt you to locate the .csv file of addresses that you exported from Thunderbird.
    4. Change the Type: drop-down to Thunderbird Contacts
    5. Destination should already be set to Contacts
    6. Click Import
    7. You will now find your Thunderbird contacts inside your Zimbra Addressbook.
      Note:  Thunderbird and Zimbra do not stay in sync.  If you go back into Thunderbird and make changes to your Addressbook, it will not update Zimbra.