Re: [Evolution] exhange offline message storage: questions and troubleshooting

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Sat, 2012-12-15 at 18:50 +0100, Adam Gold wrote:
> Hi there.  I've just installed evolution and evolution-ews and have
> successfully connected to my exchange server.

        Hi,
what is the evolution/evolution-ews version, please? You can, in
Evolution, Help->About to find it.

> I'm having problems downloading my messages from the server so I
> wanted to clarify about how the offline mail storage works.

Does it tell you any error, either in UI, or if you run evolution on a
console?

> - In Evolution in preferences --> mail accounts --> edit--> receving
> options there is check box for "automatically synchronize remote mail
> locally".  I have two questions about this: (i) does this mean all
> messages received to this exchange account post installation and
> selection of this option will be cached locally;

Correct.

> (ii) does this initiate a full download of all historical messages

It's usually used for newly discovered messages (not necessarily new),
not for old one.

> - I see that one can also right-click on a particular folder's
> preferences and there is an option "copy folder content locally for
> offline operation".  Is this the same as the previous option but
> simply on a folder by folder basis?

Correct. Sometimes you do not want to download locally your Archive
folder, then this is for it.

> Even if I try one or both of these options, I can't seem to download
> all of my stored messages from the server.  The download begins and
> then stops after which I have to manually start it again.  Also
> periodically I get a warning notice that messages can't be moved from
> the cache.

What is the exact warning, please? Is there anything on console? You can
see what evolution-ews does and your server responses, if you run
evolution like this:
   $ EWS_DEBUG=2 evolution

> This seems to be confirmed when I look in ~/.cache and compare it to
> the contents of .local/share/evolution/mail/local.  The latter is near
> empty and the former has appx 100mb.

Evolution-ews stores its data into ~/.cache/..., while your local mail,
those in On This Computer/... are in ~/.local/.... You might not cope
with these folders at all, those are internal evolution/-ews folders and
files.

        Hope it helps,
        Milan