Re: [Evolution] From POP3 to IMAP

[Paul van der Vlis <paul vandervlis nl>]

On 29-03-13 19:03, Pete Biggs wrote:

> > > If you are using POP to currently access your mail, then your
> > > mail is on a remote server (otherwise, why would you use POP) -
> > > in Evolution POP as a protocol downloads all your mail from the
> > > server and places it under "On This Computer".
> >
> > It stores it in the homedir of the user.
>
> So you aren't using POP to access the mail?

At the moment POP is used to get the mail from a provider. But this will
be changed. In the future the mail comes with SMTP to an own mailserver,
and from there the clients will get the mail with IMAP.

The question is about how to get the old mail what's in mbox format on
the disk into the new IMAP server.

> > Maybe you don't know what a thin-client server is.
>
> Err, maybe I do.

Oh, sorry. Not everybody knows about such systems.

> > > If you do indeed have access to the mail server and you are
> > > talking about installing a different IMAP server on there, then
> > > it will know nothing about the status of the mail on your client.
> > > However, once you setup the connection to the IMAP server in
> > > Evolution, you will be able to copy the mail from your local
> > > mailstore to the IMAP account within Evolution and all your mail
> > > flags will be preserved.
> >
> > Doing this from Evolution is a lot of work. It are 100+ accounts.
>
> Ok, but you asked about retaining the status of the mail - the only
> way of preserving all metadata is by doing the transfer within
> evolution. Some data is, I seem to remember, stored within the mbox
> file, but not everything.

Hmm. Most important is the "read" status and that seems to be in the
mbox file.

Do you know what's *not* in the mbox file?

> If I were doing it, then I would probably start with a blank imap
> server and keep all the old mail where it is.  You then give
> instructions to the users on how to transfer mail using evolution.
> This has the double benefit of not only reducing your workload but
> will allow the users to reduce the volume of mail on the server as
> they sort out the mail when they move it.

It are non-technical users, I am affraid they will loose old mail. And
my experience (with Thunderbird) is, that it's not always easy to copy
local mail to imap. E.g. you have to recreatie your subboxes.

With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.





-- 
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen
http://www.vandervlis.nl/