Re: [Evolution] Transfering inbox and Addressbook data to a new Computer

[Gavin Chester <gavinchester1 hotmail com>]

On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 19:22 -0500, Erich Trowbridge wrote:
>  This topic seems to have been hashed up a number of times on the
> list... My laptop harddrive went bad, and I got a new drive from the
> manufacturer. I am trying to restore my old evolution addressbook from
> backup. 

It sure is an old topic, but IMO a very critical one worth discussion.  

(/rant warning)
I don't want to enter into this as flame bait, nor sound like I am
dumping on the developers, but I live in _mortal dread_ of having to
again go through recreating my evo folders and data on another drive or
after a major reinstall or upgrade.  Like many other posters, the import
wizard didn't work for me and I spent many, many hours getting back to
normal after a major jump in versions.  I can't imagine the difficulties
involved, but whatever they are it should be made as easy as copying
back your .evolution folder in one hit - just as one might copy over
your bookmarks file between browsers.  

When I've pondered this issue aloud before, the best answer that was
given to me was to run an IMAP server (like dovecot) on my PC so that my
mail would be client-agnostic (ie, I could choose to run thunderbird or
evolution or whatever, and all my mail would "just work").  I've avoided
that because of the learning curve, but maybe I have to accept that as
the best way to do things, regardless.  
(end rant/)

Sorry for the rant.  I hope just to stimulate discussion to measure the
gravity of feeling of other users toward this issue of compatibility
between versions and ease of importing data.  If it's as high as I
suspect then perhaps the developers could flag it as a major bug.
  
Gavin