Sync & Transfer Thunderbird Address Book Contacts to iPhone

Published By Mohit Jha

Approved By Nimisha Ramesh

Published On November 18th, 2022

Reading Time 5 Minutes Reading

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source email client used by many business organizations for emailing purpose. It offers many facilities like handling number of emails, news feed accounts etc. however, if a user wants, then he can sync and transfer Thunderbird address book to iPhone, iPad, and much more. As most the users search for the solutions, so here we have discussed manual methods to export Thunderbird Address Book contacts to iPhone, iPad.

Need to Sync Thunderbird Address Book With iPhone, Android, iPad

Nowadays, Thunderbird application is one of the most popularly used desktop-based email client. Therefore, to make it more convenient, users want to transfer Thunderbird contacts to iPhone, Mac Mail, iPad, and all Android devices. This makes it easy for the users to access their contacts in all such platforms also without wasting any time. It might happen, a user not has desktop all the time and becomes difficult to access Thunderbird account or import address book from it. That is why users are searching for the solution to import Thunderbird Address Book to iPhone, iPad, Android, MAC devices.

How to Import Thunderbird Contacts to iPhone Manually?

In order to configure the Thunderbird address book (MAB) to iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and Mac Mail follow the steps mentioned below:

Export Thunderbird Address Book Contacts in vCard & CSV format

First of all, open Thunderbird application and click on Address Book tab
Then, click on the Personal Address Book option
After that, go to Tools tab and click on Export option
Now, from the Save as type, choose vCard or CSV format to export Thunderbird Address Book
Enter the unique file name and save it any desired location of your choice on local machine.

After extracting Thunderbird Address Book in CSV or vCard format, its time to sync and transfer Thunderbird Contacts to iPhone, iPad, Android devices and MAC Mail.

Limitations: Sometimes users do not have Mozilla Thunderbird application installed on the machine but a MAB file. So, in that case, it becomes difficult to import MAB file to vCard or CSV format. Apart from all this, if a user needs to import multiple MAB files to CSV or vCard format, the above discussed manual fails. It does not support bulk migration. Therefore, to overcome all such limitations, a user can directly use a third-party tool named as MAB Converter. It exports multiple MAB files to CSV/VCF/LDIF/PST format and makes it easy for the user to access it any other supporting application.

Import Thunderbird Address Book to iPhone, Android device, iPad, Mac Mail

For MAC users

In order to export Thunderbird address book to Mac Mail on a Mac OS machine, follow the steps given below:

In Mac Mail after importing CSV file, choose Do not import option for each field that you want to import. Then, from the drop-down list, map it to the respective Mac Address Book. If you do not want to include any particular field, keep it at Do not import settings
However, if you try to import .csv file that doesn’t contain the header columns, uncheck the Ignore first card option and click on the OK button
After that, choose from the used, replaced, merge, or update existing contacts for the addresses that are already present in it. Then, click on the Import tab
In last, your contacts are present as a group in MAC address book.

For Android Phone users

First of all, open an Android device. Choose the Menu icon and after that, open Contacts icon
Then, select the More option and select Import/Export option to transfer Thunderbird contacts to Android device
As the Import box displayed, click on the Choose File option where your VCF or vCard contacts are saved
Now, from the Create contact under account text box, choose the desired email address to import Thunderbird contacts to Gmail account
After that, Android device starts searching for a VCF on internal storage
Then, select vCard file that you want to export Thunderbird contacts to Android device
In last, click on the OK button and begin the import process

Import Thunderbird Address Book Contacts to iPhone

The method to sync & transfer Thunderbird Address Book contacts to iPhone or iPad is same with the help of iCloud platform:

Move vCard into iCloud Account

Log in to your iCloud account using valid credentials
Now, from the iCloud menu, select the Contacts option
Then, click on the Gear button from the lower-left corner and select Import vCard option
Now, click on the Browse button to choose the VCF file from the local machine
Select the vCard and click on Open button
After this, all your contacts are directly added to iCloud contacts that help to sync process.

Sync Thunderbird Contacts to iPhone

After exporting vCard address book into the iCloud profile, its time to sync & transfer Thunderbird contacts to iPhone. To do the same, follow the steps mentioned below:

First of all, log in to your iCloud account by entering the valid credentials
After that, navigate to the home screen and click on Contacts to confirm that contacts are there or not
Next, go to the Settings icon and select Import Contacts so that you can easily add VCF file to need to be imported to iPhone and iPad
As the process completed successfully, you can easily preview the contacts in the iPhone & iPad contacts.

Final Word

Mozilla Thunderbird is preferred email client by many of users. It contains all important data in it like contacts and calendars, which a user needs to access frequently. Considering the requirement of the users, we have discussed different solutions to sync and transfer Thunderbird Address book contacts to iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Apple Mail. As there is no direct solution to import Thunderbird contacts, so a user needs to extract the Thunderbird address book to VCF or CSV file format. In order to this in a seamless manner, one can use above-mentioned tool for the same.