222774 - Cannot import address groups (lists) from Outlook Express

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Import, defect)

Description

[Hanno Boeck]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030924 Galeon/1.3.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla 1.4.1 final for windows

Today I tried to convert a user from Outlook Express to Mozilla Mailer.
The problem was, it coudln't convert the groups from the OE-address-book. All
group names were converted, but the groups were empty. The adresses from the
groups were there, but not in the newly created groups in the mozilla address-book.
As the user had a lot of them, it was impossible for me to convert him to
mozilla (so possibly a blocker-bug?)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create some address groups in Outlook Express (the version that comes with
windows 98 se)
2. try to import them into mozilla mail

Actual Results:  
The adresses were not in the groups, the groups were empty.

Expected Results:  
The groups should have been imported correctly.

Comment 1

[Ray Booysen]

Build 2003100804
Windows XP 

I can confirm this behavior.  I imported groups from Outlook Express.  All the
groups were empty.  All the addresses were imported, but were not placed in the
proper groups.

Comment 2

[wind li]

Mail list addresses are not imported from Outlook

Comment 3

[Oliver Klee]

Also seeing this on Thunderbird 0.3 on Win2k.

Comment 4

[Oliver Klee]

*** Bug 230980 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Confirmed with OE6 and Mozilla/1.6 and Thunderbird on XP.

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 236385 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

*** Bug 232797 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

*** Bug 222873 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 236377 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[David :Bienvenu]

taking.

Comment 11

[Nathan O'Sullivan]

Using Windows Server 2003, Outlook Express 6.00.3790.0

I can confirm the same behaviour.  List names are imported as lists, however the
lists do not contain the email addresses as stored in Outlook Express.

Comment 12

[Chris Samuel]

*** Bug 267629 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Jose Fandos]

Confirming using XP with latest Outlook and TB 1.0. Lost a client conversion to
TB after the gaffe. With over 300 emails in one of his lists I wasn't ready to
add the emails manually. This should have been a blocker. My bad for not
bringing attention to this before :(

Comment 14

[Paul Oranje]

A workaround as to avoid blocked migrations to Thunderbird: have Addressbook
read and write the WAB (MS Outlook Express) and MAPI (MS Outlook) addressbooks.

How? Stop Mozilla/Thunderbird and add the following lines with a plain text
editor to "prefs.js",
for MAPI:
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.description", "MAPI AB");
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.dirType", 3);
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.position", x);
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.uri", "moz-aboutlookdirectory://op"); 
for WAB:
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.description", "WAB AB");
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.dirType", 3);
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.position", x);
 user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.uri", "moz-aboutlookdirectory://oe"); 
Do set the pref ldap_2.servers.*.position to a suitable free number, free
numbers may start from 3.

After restart, Mozilla/Thunderbird will read and write to those ABs almost as if
it were a native AB. Beware that some AB attributes may not be mapped as
expected, though most the common fields work.

See http://abzilla.mozdev.org/ for more info.

Comment 15

[Xavier Padullés]

The workaround didn't work for me.
The only solution i've found is to use the old netscape 4.7 to import de 
addressbook and then export it with the ldif format.

Comment 16

[Oliver Klee]

*** Bug 279564 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Werner Kratochwil]

(In reply to comment #14)
> A workaround as to avoid blocked migrations to Thunderbird: have Addressbook
> read and write the WAB (MS Outlook Express) and MAPI (MS Outlook) addressbooks.
> 
> How? Stop Mozilla/Thunderbird and add the following lines with a plain text
> editor to "prefs.js",
> for MAPI:
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.description", "MAPI AB");
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.dirType", 3);
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.position", x);
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.mapi.uri", "moz-aboutlookdirectory://op"); 
> for WAB:
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.description", "WAB AB");
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.dirType", 3);
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.position", x);
>  user_pref("ldap_2.servers.wap.uri", "moz-aboutlookdirectory://oe"); 
> Do set the pref ldap_2.servers.*.position to a suitable free number, free
> numbers may start from 3.
> 
> After restart, Mozilla/Thunderbird will read and write to those ABs almost as if
> it were a native AB. Beware that some AB attributes may not be mapped as
> expected, though most the common fields work.
> 
> See http://abzilla.mozdev.org/ for more info.

I tried this with Version 1.0 (20041206) under Win2K, but it did not work.
What I did was: 
1)close thunderbird
2)copied the above lines (the from WAB ones) to my prefs.js. (in
c:\programs\mozilla thunderbird\defaults\profile)
3)Replace x with 1 because my prefs.js was empty - was that the correct number
or how do I find out about available position numbers? 
4)Restart Thunderbird
5)In Thunderbird Adress book start importing from Outlook Express
I tried looking at the link above and in the link given in the prefs.js file,
but none answered my questions. 
Do you have any clue? 

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

*** Bug 279978 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[David :Bienvenu]

I have a fix for Outlook Express import - it needs some cleaning up, however.

Comment 20

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: work in progress

this basically works - I get a strange crash much later down the road that
might indicate something wrong with this code but I don't know if it's related
or not. Purify doesn't say anything helpful.

Comment 21

[David :Bienvenu]

Attachment: proposed fix

Comment 22

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Comment on attachment 180725 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

r/sr=sspitzer, yikes!

Comment 23

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 180725 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

this change only affects importing of outlook express address books with
mailing lists. I tested it on a few cases, empty lists, full lists, nested
lists, w/o a problem (though of course, nested lists don't work)

Comment 24

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 180725 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

a=asa

Comment 25

[David :Bienvenu]

fixed on trunk, for outlook express (nested lists don't work, because the
underlying ab doesn't support them yet)

Comment 26

[David :Bienvenu]

*** Bug 282007 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 27

[David :Bienvenu]

*** Bug 273509 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 28

[Vitezslav Kotrla]

I'm experiencing this bug with 1.0.6 (20050716). After importing contact info
from OE6 (6.00.2900.2180 xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) I still see empty imported
groups. Please reopen.

Comment 29

[David :Bienvenu]

1.0x contains mainly security fixes. This was not a security fix. This fix will
be in the next major release.

Comment 30

[zug_treno]

*** Bug 321390 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 31

[Lester]

As of today 25/12/2005, using version 1.0.7 (20050923), I'm still experiencing this bug. Import from OE addresses creates empty groups.

THIS IS NOT RESOLVED.

Please REOPEN this bug or advise released and tested fix.

Comment 32

[David :Bienvenu]

it's fixed in trunk and 1.5 builds, not 1.0x builds - 1.0x builds contain mainly security fixes from 1.0, not normal bug fixes.