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I am having this error, since this morning when I switch on my computer and tried to launch Thunderbird: “Unable to load address book file abook.mab. It may be read-only, or locked by another application. Please try again later.” Moreover I lost all the emails addresses which were set up in Thunderbird, 25 addresses. I am not an Ubuntu specialist, just a simple basic user. I found a post almost equivalent here : Mozilla Thunderbird Error (38.5.1) I wanted to try the solutions but : - I don't want to use "touch" command, as I don't want to create a new address book, but recover my address book and the email addresses I already set up . - I couldn't find "abook.mab" or "abook.mab.bak" files on my computer, therefore I was not able to try the second option described by @Ramesh Chand. Thanks for any help JP S

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  • really? in a terminal find -name "*abook*" 2>/dev/null returns nothing? I get ./.thunderbird/l0w22ubs.default/abook.mab
    – tatsu
    Mar 25, 2019 at 16:20
  • @tatsu Here under is the copy of the screen, when typing in terminal the command you gave me, which I didn't know, neither understand. I am just a basic user, sorry ... [link] joel-pol@JPS-X230:~$ find -name "abook" 2>/dev/null joel-pol@JPS-X230:~$ Sorry I put the asterik before and after abook, but they dont show in the post ...
    – Joel-Pol Steff
    Mar 25, 2019 at 16:40
  • okay yeah that file is well and truely gone (that command is a finder. find finds thing you want to find. in this case the criteria for finding was a name, hence -name then in between the quotes comes the name you're looking for abook bracketted by two wildcards : * which allow the search to broaden to anything before or after those sets of characters and lastly 2>/dev/null silences the errors because find whines alot while in the process of going through folders and files if any of them need admin priveleges to be read.)
    – tatsu
    Mar 25, 2019 at 16:45
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    OK, thank you very much @tatsu , much clearier when I understand, even though I am not at all an IT specialist. Do you think that I may recover it if I use the yesterday or tonight backup of my computer ? I set up backup of Ubuntu to run everyday.
    – Joel-Pol Steff
    Mar 25, 2019 at 16:51
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    Thanks for you support and help @tatsu, I fully reinstalled Thunderbird with all email addresses. As I said I am a basic user, and don't have time to spend on learning new IT things, I am enough busy with works and family ;)
    – Joel-Pol Steff
    Mar 26, 2019 at 7:27

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