All about MAB Files

The MAB file type is primarily associated with Thunderbird.

MAB	File extension: MAB
	File type:	address book

What is a MAB file?

MAB files mostly belong to Thunderbird by Mozilla. A MAB file is an address book created and used by Mozilla programs such as Thunderbird mail client and SeaMonkey web browser. It is saved in a text-encoded database file (called a Mork). The contents of a MAB file includes a collection of emails, names, and other contact information organized as key-value pairs. A MAB file also contains metadata such as the character encoding of the file's contents as well as the last time the contents were modified. MAB files can be created, edited, imported or exported using SeaMonkey or Thunderbird.

How can I open a MAB file?

You need a suitable software like Thunderbird to open a MAB file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your MAB file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a MAB file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online MAB Text Viewer

Choose your .mab file to analyze

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

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MAB file extension format:

To find out what program is needed to open MAB files, you need to determine the file format. A file format is determined by the file extension and signature, so JPEG images have the extension .jpg and the first bytes in the file are ÿØÿ. If the file extension does not match the file format, double-clicking on the file will cause an error upon opening. If there are problems opening a file, you must first determine the file format used. Our analysis of the MAB files produces the following result:

MAB is rarely used as a file extension and is used by a few programs, each with its own file format. But the following two file formats are common:

• 60% of all MAB files belong to Mozilla Address Book. These files are plain text, which means they can be viewed with any text editor such as Windows Editor, Nano for Linux, and TextEdit for macOS. The files are 1 KB to 160 KB in size, with a median of 31 KB. The file type is old but is used even today. Certain words are almost always found in the files, such as // <!-- <mdb:mork:z v="1.4"/> -->, < <(a=c)> // (f=iso-8859-1), (B8=LastModifiedDate)(B9=RecordKey)(BA=AddrCharSet)(BB=LastRecordKey), (BC=ns:addrbk:db:table:kind:pab)(BD=ListName)(BE=ListNickName and Notes. Examples of file names are abook.mab or history.mab. These files can be linked to impab.
• 10% of all MAB files start with the bytes mabf crucial for this file format. They consist of unreadable binary data. Most of these files are 1 MB to 5 MB in size. The following keywords are characteristic: inst, mabf, mtrl, musc and Music2. Such files sometimes refer to battle.

All other MAB files (30%) have no consistent format, often, for example, SKF. Files like these are sometimes linked to export or fulb. You can get all the details of your MAB file by dragging it onto this page or by clicking the button "Choose your .mab file to analyze" above.