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Thunderbird add-on 11 April 2007 : vCard Tools in Mozilla Thunderbird

I’ve just discovered the MoreColsForAddressBook extension for Thunderbird.

It’s not obvious from its name, but it provides import/export tools and additional entries for contacts in your Mozilla address book, which includes really useful operations that support vCard! This makes a great companion for those of us who use the vCard format to share our contact details with the world.

The extension doesn’t appear to be listed in Mozilla’s add-on repository, so I thought it was worth giving this an airing here. Read more about this extension on its page: MoreColsForAddressBook

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5 Comments

Comment 1

Just a remark:
It runs well only with single contact vcards!
So do not import multiple contacts stored in the same vcard-file.
It means, if you have 500 contacts, you have to import separately each vcard.
This can take a long time…..

gabriel, 28 April 2007 at 0006

Comment 2

Thanks for your comment, Gabriel. I’ve just looked into this a little.

Typically, vCard files are associated with a single contact. However, the vCard specification appears to suggest that multiple contacts may be contained within a single vCard file. It’s known as “vCard Grouping” and support for it appears to be optional. You are quite right – Thunderbird with MoreColsForAddressBook doesn’t appear to support this.

I’m not sure about other programs, but Address Book on Mac OS X allows contacts to be exported to a single vCard file. If you’re using this, moving your contacts could take a while! But according to Macworld, you can export multiple contacts to individual vCard files by holding down the Option key when you drag the contacts out of Address Book.

MoreColsForAddressBook allows multiple vCard files to be imported at once – I’ve just imported several using “Import vCard” and selecting more than one.

dotjay, 28 April 2007 at 1759

Comment 3

vCard seems absolutely pointless in Thunderbird. It attaches right at the bottom of the email after the text that you’re replying to so most of the time its completely invisible. Or does anybody know a way to get it visible.

Martin, 31 August 2007 at 0351

Comment 4

Actually it works just fine with a whole bunch of contacts exported as a single vCard — I just tried it out…! Exported about 200 contacts in one vCard and imported them into Thunderbird without any problems…

Anyway, one of the major flaws of Thunderbird on the Mac (in my eyes) is that it is totally ignoring the on-board Address Book application…! :(

MILE, 08 September 2007 at 0128

Comment 5

Funny you should mention Thunderbird ignoring Address Book, as now I have a MacBook Pro I’m considering a move to using Mail instead.

dotjay, 10 September 2007 at 1757

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