Moving from Thunderbird to Outlook 2016 and the mail part is sorted. Now the address book: two books in Thunderbird, Personal and Collected, about 450 entries combined.
What export format survives the trip with the least field damage?
Export Thunderbird address book to Outlook
Solved Email & Outlook
AJ
Andrew Jackson March 27, 2018
2 replies
5,560 views
Reviewed by moderators
CSV is the format Outlook's wizard accepts, and Thunderbird exports it directly. LDIF, the other Thunderbird option, means nothing to Outlook so skip it.
1
In Thunderbird open the Address Book window, select the Personal Address Book.
2
Tools, Export, choose Comma Separated (system charset) if your contacts are plain English, or the Unicode CSV variant if names use accents or non Latin scripts.
3
Repeat for Collected Addresses, giving each book its own file.
4
In Outlook: File, Open and Export, Import/Export, Import from another program or file, Comma Separated Values, browse to a file, target Contacts and click Map Custom Fields before finishing.
The Map Custom Fields step is where the field damage gets prevented. Thunderbird's column names do not all match Outlook's, so drag Primary Email onto E-mail Address, Display Name onto Name and check the phone columns landed in the right slots, the preview pane shows a live sample record while you map. Collected Addresses is worth a skim before importing at all, it is every address Thunderbird ever auto saved, mostly one time senders you do not want cluttering Outlook.
Mapped the fields per the preview and all 260 personal contacts landed correctly. Skipped Collected entirely after looking at it, 190 entries of noise.