1677874 - Importing address CVS file not store items properly.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[FredMcD]

Attachment: AddressBook-Capture.JPG

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0

Steps to reproduce:

I downloaded my address book from Hotmail.com(Microsoft)
using Firefox to create a CVS file. I then imported the file into
Thunderbird (78.4.3 32 bite).

Actual results:

But when I look at the address book in Thunderbird, I could see entries, but no
data was displayed. I edited one entry, and found that the data was there, but
not where it should be. I included a screenshot. The bottom part shows the
file created via Hotmail.com (contacts5a.csv).
The upper part shows the same data after editing all entries so that each
field was properly placed (Collected Addresses 1.csv). Please note the differences.
Example: The web address from the Hotmail list is placed in the street
address(2) field

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 1: Matching TB-AB-fields with CSV fields

Hi Fred,

this looks like a support request, not a bug in Thunderbird.

You're saying:

• Bottom part of screenshot is CSV to be imported.

Your import-csv file looks wrong already: Email addresses are contained in the column named "Business phone". That does not prevent correct import, but just adds to the confusion.

Per screenshot, the names and the order of columns/fields between your CSV and what Thunderbird ultimately needs are different.
So during import, you need to make sure that you "cross-match" the fields expected by TB with the really existing fields in your CSV.

Screenshot 1 shows the Import Address Book (from Text file) dialog:

• Green square shows TB fields not yet matching CSV fields (your case).
• Red circle shows how to move TB fields around so that they match CSV fields.
• You can also use Previous & Next buttons to preview the data association.

If you match them correctly, this import problem of data in the wrong AB fields will not occur.

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 2: TB AB fields and CSV fields correctly matched

This shows the correct matching after moving TB fields into the correct slots.

You're supposed to uncheck all fields which you're not importing.
Not sure why it always claims errors on import, but in my test the import worked correctly and generated a new address book in Thunderbird with the CSV address data correctly imported into the right fields.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Found and filed bug 1678092 while testing this.

Comment 4

[FredMcD]

I was pointing out that the exported and import fields are not in the same order.

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to FredMcD from comment #4)

I was pointing out that the exported and import fields are not in the same order.

Not sure what you are trying to say?
Do you still think there's a bug? I don't think so.

Of course fields exported from TB address book and fields exported from hotmail will neither have the same names nor the same order - there's no standardized pattern involved here, so both parties just export what they have, and their way of arranging the data is different.

When importing, YOU need to do the matching of TB's fields with the fields imported from hotmail, by reordering the TB fields in the left column to match the respective fields from your imported hotmail data.