Mozilla Thunderbird supports storing contacts in built-in Address Book. It stores contacts in .mab format in profile folder. If you are moving from Thunderbird to an alternate email client, it is highly unlikely .mab addressbook would be readable by same. Thunderbird supports exporting contacts in address books into various formats like csv (comma-separated value), LDIF (LDAP Data Interchange Format) and tab-delimited files. Among the above formats csv is the most common and supported by almost all popular address books. Thunderbird also supports multiple address books for example you may create personal address book for personal contacts, office address book for office contacts etc. However, different address books are stored separately in separate .mab files and while exporting them you have to export them individually. You may refer to the instructions below for exporting Thunderbird contacts in a csv file for importing them into Outlook:
- Open Thunderbird
- Press Alt Key on Keyboard to bring Menu Bar
- Click on Tools
- Click on Address Book
- Alternatively, you may also press Ctrl+Shift+B key on keyboard to launch address book using shortcut
- From left hand side pane select the address book you wish to export
- Click on Tools in Address Book
- Click on Export
- Select Comma Separated in Save as type
- Navigate to desired location for saving the file and give an appropriate file name
- Click on Save to export the contacts
- Launch Outlook
- Click on File tab
- Click Open & Export
- Click Import/Export to launch Import/Export wizard
- Click Import from another program or file and click next
- Select Comma Separated values (Windows) and click next
- Click on Browse and navigate to the location where contacts are saved in csv file from Thunderbird
- Also select the desired operation for duplicate contacts from the options provided below depending upon whether you wish to import duplicates and replace or duplicate them or not
- Select the field where you wish to import the contacts and click on Next
- A summary of operations to be performed would be displayed along with options to map the fields or change destination
- Click on Finish to start the import process.