TB Address Book

[viking33]

Using TB v. 3.16.
Is there any way to remove the "Collected Address" and Personal Address" entries completely and just have the Address Book?
R\C the entry just shows Delete as grayed out.

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[Bigaldoc]

Using TB v. 3.16.
Is there any way to remove the "Collected Address" and Personal Address" entries completely and just have the Address Book?
R\C the entry just shows Delete as grayed out.

That's tough one, Bob. I ONLY have ALL my addresses in the Personal address book and I LONG AGO stopped TB from "automatically" saving any addresses. Now that I'm in version 3.x I'm not sure what I did to accomplish that. If you HIGHLIGHT all the addresses in a book, won't it then let you delete them?

The only screen I can see now in 3.x that doesn't help my memory is this one. As I said, ALL my addresses are in Personal.

[jonwallace]

Using TB v. 3.16.
Is there any way to remove the "Collected Address" and Personal Address" entries completely and just have the Address Book?
R\C the entry just shows Delete as grayed out.

You might not be supposed to do this but:

Untick the collected address thig (or redirect it) as Al suggested, then:
WITH THUNDERBIRD CLOSED!
In your profile folder, create a file called user.js (there may be one there already, if so just edit that). Edit it in notepad and add the following lines:

Code: Select all

user_pref("ldap_2.servers.pab.position", 0);
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.history.position", 0);

A brief go at this removed the address books from my screen. It's probably best to empty them first. To restore them, delete the lines again (or if this doesn't work, set ...pab.position to 1 and ...history.position to 2)

As always, it's best to back up your profile first and remember that YMMV.

[stuck]

If Jon's suggestion of editing a .js file offline sounds a bit scary you can probably achieve the same effect by using the config editor in TB.

Click Tools | Options
Select 'Advanced'
Select the 'General' tab
Click on the 'Config Editor' button
Edit/add the lines suggested by Jon NB all his health warnings still apply so go carefully.

Ken

[jonwallace]

If Jon's suggestion of editing a .js file offline sounds a bit scary you can probably achieve the same effect by using the config editor in TB.

Scary! This is eileen's lounge, nothing scares us!

Click Tools | Options
Select 'Advanced'
Select the 'General' tab
Click on the 'Config Editor' button
Edit/add the lines suggested by Jon NB all his health warnings still apply so go carefully.

Ken's right, that is the way to do it (I've used TB since 0.1...) but I'll just add that the lines should be there already and are of the form

Code: Select all

ldap_2.servers.history.position	default	integer	2

doubleclick the one you're interested in and type 0 instead of 1 or 2.

After I'd slept on it, I realised that I hadn't said that this doesn't delete the address books, just stops them showing up in the GUI. If collected addresses are still enabled and pointed at one of the books, then I suppose it will still fill with addresses.

Oh, and I haven't looked to see if you can search these hidden address books for contacts.

[viking33]

John & Ken,
I've been meaning to get back on this subject but......?
I did edit the TB config as suggested and it DID remove the two other locations and left just the address book intact.
Thanks!
You did mention that the collected addresses might still be "collecting"
addresses. Is there a way to check if that is indeed the case? And if so, can they be deleted occasionally? ( or automatically? )
-------------------------
Partial quote:
After I'd slept on it, I realised that I hadn't said that this doesn't delete the address books, just stops them showing up in the GUI. If collected addresses are still enabled and pointed at one of the books, then I suppose it will still fill with addresses.

Oh, and I haven't looked to see if you can search these hidden address books for contacts.
-----------------------------

[jonwallace]

You did mention that the collected addresses might still be "collecting"
addresses. Is there a way to check if that is indeed the case? And if so, can they be deleted occasionally? ( or automatically? )

I suppose from time to time, you could put the entries back the way they were, so that the address books show, then delete everything in them (if there is anything)

If you're feeling very brave, you could close Thunderbird, hop over to your profile folder and delete the files with a .mab extension. On my setup, abook.mab is my actual addressbook, and there are two other .mab files. In my case, these other two files came back when I restarted TB, but were empty. I don't mind my addresses being collected, so I restored them from my profile copy that I made before I started this process.

Summary:

• Close Thunderbird
• Back up profile
• Identify the .mab files that you don't want
• kill the wee burghers