April 16

Mac Address Book… try Thunderbird Nightly

Posted by Bryan Clark
Filed under mozilla | 26 Comments

The latest Thunderbird Trunk Builds are built to integrate into the Mac Address Book and we need some testing, so stop watching bug 203927 for builds.

1. Grab an Official Mac (Universal binary) from the nightly build

2. Enable the Address Book via the config editor (sorry you have to do this)

Open Preferences / Options and go to the tab Advanced -> General
Click: [Config Editor...]

Create the following: (from bug 397811)

"ldap_2.servers.osx.description" -> "System Address Book"
"ldap_2.servers.osx.dirType"     -> 3
"ldap_2.servers.osx.uri"         -> "moz-abosxdirectory:///"

3. Restart Thunderbird

4. Try out using your System Address Book integrated into Thunderbird

5. File some bugs or hop on the dev.apps.thunderbird news group to ask about issues

Some Know Issues

Updates

These pref entries have to be created as they don’t already exist, see comments below. 

bug 397811 has landed in the nightly Thunderbird releases, look for this menu.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 7:16 am and is filed under mozilla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

26 Responses to “Mac Address Book… try Thunderbird Nightly”

  1. Michael on April 16th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    This is nice, but… is a similar thing on the way for Linux? E.g. using the evolution-data-server for contacts etc? *That* would be great…

  2. Adam Dempsey on April 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    I’m sure a lot of people have been waiting for this for a long time! Looking forward to trying it out!

  3. Henrik Skupin on April 17th, 2008 at 3:16 am

    Bryan, this feature isn’t only available for the latest trunk builds. Even builds from before a half year made it possible. But thanks for the post. Hopefully it will activate some users to do further testings. Personally I really love the integration and cannot await the next Thunderbird release. After the release of Firefox 3 I’ll try to do some more testings on this part.

  4. Boemer on April 17th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    Works fine with Addressbook, Thunderbird looks nice incomparison to last time I used it (a few years ago). I think I give it a longer try…

  5. chris.the.swiss on May 5th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    can’t find the
    ldap_2.servers.osx.description

    in fact nothing with osx in it. (I am on 10.4.11…)

    what I find is:
    ldap_2.servers.Contacts.description

    also:
    ldap_2.servers.osx.uri
    seems to be
    ldap_2.servers.default.uri
    (Value:
    moz-abldapdirectory://default.mab)

    right now there is a system address book, but it is empty … Probably did something wrong

  6. Jordan on May 14th, 2008 at 6:25 am

    there’s no ldap_2.servers.osx.WHATEVER existing! which version u guys use though?

  7. Henrik Skupin on May 14th, 2008 at 6:39 am

    You have to manually create the not existing preferences. Do that by using the context menu within the list of preferences. After you have created all these entries it should work.

  8. DUMPLOGGER on May 14th, 2008 at 7:28 am

    Here is the solution for not finding any values with OSX in.

    CREATE NEW VALUES
    “ldap_2.servers.osx.description” -> “System Address Book”
    “ldap_2.servers.osx.dirType” -> 3
    “ldap_2.servers.osx.uri” -> “moz-abosxdirectory:///”

    1. string
    2. integer
    3. string

    ENJOY

  9. DUMPLOGGER on May 14th, 2008 at 7:29 am

    sorry henrik, didn’t notice you’ve already replied :)

  10. chris.the.swiss on May 14th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    Wow, it worked! Thanks to Henrik Skupin and DUMPLOGGER for the replies. At least I can see my address book now.

  11. David Chartier on May 14th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

    I didn’t see this explicitly stated anywhere so I figured I’d check on the topic: I got this working, but it appears that Address Book entries are not actually editable from within Thunderbird 3.1 alpha. Is this correct?

  12. DUMPLOGGER on May 14th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    you’re right. no editable contacts with TB3 Alpha…

  13. חדשות מוזילה » Blog Archive » שוחררה גירסת אלפא ראשונה של Thunderbird 3 on May 14th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    [...] מפנקס הכתובות של OS X. תכונה זו מנוטרלת כברירת מחדל; ראו כאן למידע [...]

  14. First Look at Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 on May 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am

    [...] the native OS X Address Book. This rough feature is disabled by default, but developer Bryan Clark posts a work-around for the adventurous. A few more features look promising in Thunderbird 3, but I wasn’t able to grab [...]

  15. First Look at Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 [Screenshot Tour] · TechBlogger on May 15th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    [...] the native OS X Address Book. This rough feature is disabled by default, but developer Bryan Clark posts a work-around for the [...]

  16. First Look at Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 [Screenshot Tour] | Another Way To Be Rich on May 16th, 2008 at 1:37 am

    [...] the native OS X Address Book. This rough feature is disabled by default, but developer Bryan Clark posts a work-around for the [...]

  17. Catch a Glimpse of Mozilla’s E-Mail Future in Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 | Networking for Networkers on May 20th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    [...] The OS X version of Thunderbird 3 is now a native Cocoa app, meaning it can integrate with the Mac OS X address book, a much-requested feature. Unfortunately that functionality doesn’t appear to available by default yet either, but if you want to turn it on and test it out, Bryan Clark has posted some instructions. [...]

  18. Bryan Clark » Blog Archive » Standard8 has your name on May 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am

    [...] used to be an awkward set of instructions is about to become as simple as a [...]

  19. Mitra Ardron on May 30th, 2008 at 1:17 am

    Note that on TB 2, the string
    “moz-abOSXdirectory:///”
    worked fine and was what was recommended, on TB3 that string will block seeing any address books, AND not show you OSX. It has to be lower case.

  20. mpc on June 20th, 2008 at 8:51 am

    Displays nicely, so that you can use OSX address book for addressing/sending Emails – that’s great!
    BUT is this real integration – can you add/store addresses to the OSX book from your Tbird messages? I can’t (it puts them in my ‘Personal Address Book’; perhaps I’m doing something wrong.

  21. nameless2k on August 27th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    No it one way only. Thunderbirds only gains READ access to MacOS X’ system addressbook. More details and very detailed instruction set with pictures may be found over there: http://news.metaparadigma.de/?p=260

    Enjoy, nl2k

  22. Novell Evolution on Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) « Panyasan’s Random Musings on October 16th, 2008 at 9:19 am

    [...] real alternative to Evolution’s address book and then closely integrated in the system. Until Thunderbird 3’s access to the Mac OS Address book is available, I can use the LDAP server as a [...]

  23. Nasendackel 3.0 : Thunderbird und das MacOS Adressbuch on October 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am

    [...] ergänzen wir (rechte Maustaste → neu) folgende Einträge: ldap_2.servers.osx.description → System Address Book (string) ldap_2.servers.osx.dirType [...]

  24. Bernd on October 21st, 2008 at 11:03 am

    Hi guys,
    A simple (I hope) question. Now that I switched to Thunderbird 3.0 (Shredder), did the config change and that stuff…how do I set the system addresss book as default? When I click on the Address Book Icon I can see indeed the Personal Address Book, the System Address Book and the Collected Addresses, but when I try to add a new address from a received email, it goes by default to the Collected Addresses. Any clues? Thanks!

  25. Daniel Harwood on December 9th, 2009 at 3:11 pm

    Bryan, thanks, excellent article. As a matter of interest I was using a build of TB2 to get Mac OS X Address Book integration, when I installed TB3 it appears to have integrated the TB2 prefs file, but in TB2 the ldap_2.servers.osx.uri was capitalised – and worked – but in TB3 the capitalised entry did not work. Edited the entry to remove the capitalisation and hey presto! Thanks again!

  26. MozillaES la comunidad de Mozilla en español on May 16th, 2010 at 12:54 am

    [...] – Ahora la libreta de direcciones de Thunderbird puede leer la libreta de Mac OS X, por defecto esta característica viene desactivada, pero puede ser activada siguiendo los pasos de este enlace. [...]

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