Download Thunderbird and follow along with our series

- When you first install Thunderbird your Address Book will be empty.

- Click on the Address Book icon in the toolbar.

- You can add contacts one at a time. Click New Card.

- The card that appears has 3 tabs and you can enter a wealth of information for each contact.

- You can also import contacts from a file.

- Every email program offers some way to export your contacts to a file.

Check out our tutorial on exporting your contacts from Outlook Express

- The most common type of file is text-based like LDIF, CSV (comma delimited), Tab delimited, or plain text.

- Once you've exported your contacts from another program you're ready to import into Thunderbird.

- Click Tools and then Import. Indicate that you want to import an Address Book and click Next.

- Select the type of file, in this example CSV, and click Next.

- Find your file, highlight it, and click Open.

- The display you now see has the fields from the imported file on the right, and standard fields on the left.

- Highlight Primary Email on the left and click Move Down until it lines up with Email on the right.

- Do this for any fields you want to import.

- When you're ready click OK.

- Your contacts are imported.

- If your address book listings don't look correct, don't worry.

- Just highlight all of them and press the DEL key. Now reimport and change your settings.