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Thunderbird - Exporting your Address Book(s) / Contacts

Best Effort Support Only

This document contains instructions on using a non-Microsoft email client, such as Apple Mail or Thunderbird. Microsoft does not recommend these clients for use with Office 365, and there are often significant limitations in client functionality as a result.

Because of this, the DoIT Help Desk is only able to offer best effort support for these clients, and certain issues may require the use of a Microsoft client in order to be resolved. For more information on Office 365 client support, please see: Office 365 - Which clients/protocols will be supported?.

This document will provide step-by-step guidance on how to export your address book from Thunderbird.

Important: For those who use contact groups, please be aware that the individual contacts of your address book will be included in the export but your contact groups will not. If you use contact groups, please make a note of them prior to migrating so that you can more easily re-create them in Office 365.

Exporting your Address Book(s) from Thunderbird

  1. Open Thunderbird.

    • This process will be nearly identical on either Mac or Windows.

  2. Select the Address Book icon.

    Open Thunderbird Address Book

  3. Select the desired Address Book you would like to export, then go to Tools > Export.

    Select Address Book to Export

  4. Give a descriptive name for the exported Address Book file (e.g., Address Book), then select a location where you would like to save this file.

    Name and select a save location for the exported file

  5. In the Format: drop down menu, select Comma Separated to create a CSV file, then click on Save to finish the process.

    Select comma separated from the drop down menu

Note: When exporting the .csv file, be sure that there are no contacts listed between quotation marks, as Outlook can at times skip contacts between misplaced quotation marks. If you experience this issue, a workaround is to open the .csv file in a Notepad application, and then deleting all quotation marks (").


Keywords:thunderbird address books mac office 365 microsoft o365 windows export exporting comma separated values .csv migrating preparing transition o365 contacts   Doc ID:37912
Owner:Help Desk KB Team .Group:DoIT Help Desk
Created:2014-02-24 13:43 CSTUpdated:2020-08-13 17:22 CST
Sites:DoIT Help Desk, Office 365
Feedback:  8   2