Re: [Evolution] IMAP server dead, but evolution has my emails

[Greg Oliver <goliver cistera com>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Milan Crha" <mcrha redhat com>
> To: "evolution-list" <evolution-list gnome org>
> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2014 6:18:22 AM
> Subject: Re: [Evolution] IMAP server dead, but evolution has my emails

> On Thu, 2014-10-30 at 17:39 -0500, Greg Oliver wrote:
> > My mail server did some nasty things the other night, and I was
> > forced to rebuild without a backup to restore.  Most users were ok
> > since they had cached copies of their emails, and could copy them to
> > local folders, and the re-create the server in their client and copy
> > them to the server's folders.
> >
> > I have a predicament where all of my mail is still in
> > ~/.cache/evolution/mail....., but evolution will not let me copy the
> > messages to local folders from the GUI since the IMAP server is
> > offline (I am doing all of this unconnected, and not accepting the
> > new cert for the new machine), so I cannot easily move them back and
> > forth.
>
>        Hi,
> while running evolution on a disconnected machine might work the same,
> try to run evolution from a terminal like this:
>   $ evolution --offline
> That will start evolution in offline mode, thus showing you only
> offline data. I do not know your evolution version, but I suppose
> it'll work too, especially if it's something like 3.12.4+ [1].
>
> Otherwise create a Maildir account, pointing to some local directory.
> Create a folder in it in the evolution's UI, which will be reflected
> in that local directory. Then copy files from
>   ~/.cache/evolution/mail/<imap-account-uid>/folders/...
> to the
>   <path-to-local-maildir>/.subfolder/new
> directory, and then refresh the folder view in the evolution. It'll
> move the messages from the 'new' directory to the 'cur' directory and
> show them as available in the UI. It's laborious, because a need of
> doing it folder by folder, unfortunately. Also delete and expunge the
> *Maildir's* messages from the evolution's UI to not mix folder's
> content.
>
> Definitely make a copy of the ~/.cache/evolution/mail/<imap-account>/
> before doing anything with the underlying files, thus you'd not lose
> anything.
>
>        Hope it helps,
>        Milan
>
> [1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=729848

Hi,

Thanks for the reply - I was able to accomplish it by highlighting all of the emails and saving as mbox and 
opening in local folders and then dragging back to my IMAP account once I was back on-line.

-Greg