Upload Thunderbird address book TO html for use on smartphone etc.

[wysocki]

I have a smartphone and I use it to access my email. However, when composing an email on it I have a problem. My list of phone contacts on the phone is very different from my list of email contacts in my Thunderbird desktop app.  I use my Gmail address book to store primarily phone contacts, and I use Thunderbird for my list of email contacts. I wanted a way to get my Thunderbird contact list onto my smartphone to be able to compose emails to addresses in that list. Here's my solution.

I wrote a script to export my Thunderbird Personal Address Book to a csv file. It then reads that file and re-writes it with html wrappers around the data to make it into a nicely formatted web page. It then uploads the htm file to my website. On my smartphone, I created a shortcut to the file's URL and whenever I click it, I get the list displayed. Each contact shows name and email address along with a COPY button that will put the address into the clipboard. Then in my email client, I can easily paste that address into it. Alternatively, clicking on the actual email link will open a new message dialog in your email client with that address already entered.

To use the app, all you need to do is use Thunderbird and have a webserver available. You'll need to download the FTPEX.AU3 file from this website and make a few changes to some constants around line 17 for FTP login info, etc.

 

pab2ftp.au3