1501171 - Address book not portable, can't specify location outside of profile

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[x38class]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.67 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

none


Actual results:

none


Expected results:

Email folder location is able to be selected, this is great as I can have them on a portable drive & use on any of my 3 computers, however on the other computers I have no address book, it should be located in same folder as selected for emails. Solution: on initiation of thunderbird, copy address book to that folder (1st time), if 2nd time compare both, if same do nothing, if copy is later (ie updated on another computer, ask which to use & show differences. Any changes made to address book, make to both. At present I have to remember to export it, then import it each time I change computers.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I'm not sure what the history is for providing configurable locations for mail folders - perhaps space was the motivating factor.  I doubt addressbook storage is comparable.  

If "sharing" address books is your goal this there are other solutions - sync methods and ldap.

And if you value your data you really shouldn't piecemeal bits of the profile to external locations.  If you want Thunderbird to be portable then put the entire profile on a portable drive.


Therefore I don't think we should do what this bug requests

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Agreed we don't want to change this.

Comment 3

[x38class]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #1)
> I'm not sure what the history is for providing configurable locations for
> mail folders - perhaps space was the motivating factor.  I doubt addressbook
> storage is comparable.  
> 
> If "sharing" address books is your goal this there are other solutions -
> sync methods and ldap.
> 
> And if you value your data you really shouldn't piecemeal bits of the
> profile to external locations.  If you want Thunderbird to be portable then
> put the entire profile on a portable drive.
> 
> 
> Therefore I don't think we should do what this bug requests

Please advise location of instructions to entirely port Thunderbird to external drive, including address book & all 4 different account settings I have, also thunderbird settings, sync and ldap do not appear options for my wife to use.

It would be helpful to others if suitable links were provided for suggested solutions

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Please see "Thunderbird portable" - http://lmgtfy.com/?q=thunderbird+portable