[Evolution] recovering from a crash

[Charles Reynolds <charles unixstar com>]

I was in the process of rebuilding a box with a new 300GB drive after
the previous one had crashed. Lots of Contacts, Calender events, mail
folders, etc.in evolution when the new drive started going bad after
only two months in service. When it started to go I rushed and made a
tarball of the .evolution directory not having time to research that I
needed the config files too. I had made backups of everything else but
not these. So now I have a new drive and a tarball that Evolution will
not recognize without the configurations. After two days of googling
and reading I cannot find a way to rebuild the mailer with only the one
directory. What are the magic words or potions to do this?

I've even tried to import the mail and contacts into Kmail and  Kontact.
No go. Am I hosed or is there a solution.

TIA
Charlie