Thunderbird to Ipad

[#1]

Does anybody know how or if a Thunderbird email address book can be transferred to an iPad (Contacts)

Having been searching around Google it seems to be a job-to-far.

They can of course be individually added to the iPad, but that is long-winded in the extreme, and I only have one life to do the hundreds I have.

My friend I gave my "old" Samsung Galaxy to, is having the same problem with a Microsoft mail, but I'm not sure which one.

[#2]

@petlew - I haven't read the whole article, as I'm meant to be working but does this help?

http://www.pawprint.net/news/article/147/Synching-iPhone-iPad-Android-Mac-and-Thunderbird/

[#3]

That's quite an article!!.

I'll take a long look when in a quiet moment (?) and see if it works.

I'll let you know.

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Well, I seem to have fixed this another way. A bit unorthodox but it works.

Neither Apple or Windows advertise much that Apple iCloud drive has a Win 10 version.

Having installed iCloud drive on my Windows laptop, I have been able to export my Thunderbird address books to the iCloud.

But its not perfect, In iCloud drive (in the Win 10 side can saved (not imported) from the standard Win file save window.

In the iPad, the address book can be opened in an MS Excel like window, From there any email address can be copy/pasted into the mail "To".

Its not as tidy as Thunderbird's (or most other windows based mail clients I expect) address use, for instance you can't just type the first letter of an address and expect a list of possibilities. But it does work, and doesn't in practice take as long as I've made it sound. Most importantly my Thunderbird address book is located on my iPad.

I have yet to try if I can use some of the group addresses I have, But I suspect these won't work. But I can add them individually on the quite rare occasions I need them.

So with my thanks to Mook, I'm giving myself a Fix credit.

ICloud Drive, is of course needed on both devices.

New addresses used in the iPad are saved directly in the mail client (the very excellent Blue Mail) in the normal way.

[#5]

I would like to be wrong but I have concluded that it is impossible to transfer group addresses/mailing lists between different email clients.

[#6]

Fortunately you are wrong

You can export to an LDIF file https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/988119 and into an ipad as per https://support.apple.com/kb/ph11586?locale=en_GB but it will overwrite the existing one

Note that the export options include CSV which may be more useful in general or Vcard using this extension https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1078601

[#7]

You've not convinced my @Oldjim.  Group addresses/mailing lists are subsets of the entire contents of your Address Book grouped together so you can treat them as a single entity when sending an email.  So, for example, if you are a Team Captain you construct a mailing list with the email addresses of all the team members, call it the 'TheTeam' and send an email to 'TheTeam' whenever you want to contact everybody.  Whilst it is certainly possible to transfer your entire address book, I have always observed that any lists/subsets are lost and need to be reconstructed from scratch.  I looked at your links but could find nothing there to indicate otherwise.

[#8]

From experience I just moved the entire address list from Outlook Express to Thunderbird and it all worked correctly but that was using the install transfer option

I just tried using csv format to move addresses from Outlook 2003 to Thunderbird and it was a total failure whether the use of other formats would work I couldn't be bothered to try so you may be correct

[#9]

I'm not tech enough to get into a debate about this. But I have read a number of the Apple forums on this subject, whichever method is used to try to transfer Thunderbird address books to iPad seem to be split with those who found it easy and those who had all sorts of problems ending with being unable to complete it.

I seem to be in the latter group.

My method may be "crude" and have fairly basic results, but it does work and achieve the result I need, and a lot quicker than looking up and typing in addresses with the reasonable likelihood of getting it wrong. But admittedly slower than have an integrated address book.

Incidentally, when I exported my entire address books, the  five groups I have some of which contain up to a hundred addresses did not transfer at all not even as a group name.