Copy Contacts from Live Mail to Thunderbird

Re: Windows 11 and Thunderbird 140.0.0 (64-bit)
(July 17, 2025)

On updating this computer from Windows 10 to Windows 11 yesterday, I discovered that Windows 11 doesn’t like Windows Live Mail (WLM), and won’t let it contact my mail servers. I’ve been using WLM forever, but finding no solution, I decided to switch to something else. I tried moving to Outlook (New), but wasn’t able to make that work either. So, my next choice was Mozilla’s Thunderbird (MT).

I was very favorably impressed right off the bat when setting up the first of my five email accounts, with MT asking only for my name and email address, then going out to find the server, get all the setup parameters, and set them up automatically. Then it was time to transfer all my old mail, and my address book (contacts) from WLM to MT.

There are several articles currently online about how to do that, but most of them appear to be outdated, advocating the use add-ons that are apparently no longer supported by MT. I’ll talk about transcribing emails elsewhere.

As for transcribing contacts, there’s even less online help, so I decided to post this. Here’s how I did it …

1. Open WLM and click Contacts near the bottom of the Home pane.
2. Click Export in the Home ribbon, and select “Comma separated values (.CSV)” on the drop-down menu.
3. In the CSV Export pop-up window, provide a filename in the “Save exported file as:” field, then click Next >.
4. In the Save As pop-up window, chose a folder for the file to be saved to, and select “Comma Separated Values (*.CSV) as the file type. Then click the Save button.
5. Back at the CSV Export window, click Next >.
6. “Select the fields you wish to export” pops up. Select “Name” and “Email Address”. Beyond that, you can select whatever else you think is appropriate, based on how much detail you ordinarily keep about your contacts. Make a note of the fields you’ve selected, then deselect everything else and click Finish.
7. Close WLM, and open MT.
8. Click the Show Spaces Toolbar ->|arrow at the lower left corner of the MT window, then click on the Address Book (Alt+2) icon near the top of the pane that opens.
9. The Address Books pane opens; click Import.
10. On the “Import Address Book File” pop-up window, click “Comma or tab separated file (.csv, .tsv)”. Then click the Continue button.
11. In the pop-up “Select Address Book file – Select a file to import …” window, find the .CSV file you created in WLM, then click the Open button.
12. The Import “Address Book file” changes to its “Match filed names” mode.
13. Click the selection box for each “Source field” you want to import, according to the note you made in Step 6.
14. For each item you select, click on the down arrow under “Address book field” and specify the corresponding field in your new MT address book. Then press the Continue button.
15. The Import “Address Book file” changes to its “Select where to import …” mode. You can select the address book you want to update with these new contacts, or create a new one. “Personal Address Book” will contain your main list of contacts. “Collected Addresses” will contain email addresses skimmed from messages you send or reply to. If you’d like to keep this list of WLM separate, then choose the “Create a new directory called …” option. Then click Continue, Start Import, and Finish.
16. Having been returned to the address books pane, click the targeted address book to see that the WLM contacts have been properly added. If there’s a problem, you can select and delete all the contacts, go back to Step 7, and try it again.

I hope you’ve found the above information helpful. During the writing of it, I discovered that there’s a very nice reference for Thunderbird at www.flossmanuals.net. Unfortunately, it’s apparently about fifteen years old and has never been updated, but it still contains some interesting and helpful information.