Mozilla Thunderbird Error (38.5.1)

During launch of the application I get the following error:

Unable to load address book file abook.mab. It may be read-only, or locked by another application. Please try again later.

If I skip it, I cannot add a new contact in the address book. Has anyone got an answer to this please.

2 Answers

You can try following steps:

• make a copy of abook.mab.bak and call it, for example, myaddbook.mab, then save it wherever you want

• install this extension -->

• once installed, open addressbook, go in Tools --> Actions for addressbook --> Import mab and import myaddbook.mab

• now you should have a new addressbook, but probably you don't see nothing inside

• select it right-clicking and choose "Restore/Recover"

• you'll have another new addressbook that could have your addresses

Please check also permission for that folder/subfolder should read/write access.

Found the solution. Basically when you download the file thunderbird-38.5.1.tar.bz2 from thunderbird download page, the expected file is not included within the tar file. That's why it complains that it cannot find the address book file.

1. In you console, cd to your thunderbird folder
2. Typetouch abook.mab
3. sudo thunderbird. You should now have an address book