Re: [Evolution] Cannot see contacts/addressbook from imported data

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Sun, 2015-01-25 at 16:48 +0100, edmund wrote:
> -------------------------
> Unable to open address book
>
> This address book cannot be opened.  Please check that the
> path /home/ed/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system-address-book 
> exists and that permissions are set to access it.
>
> Detailed error message: Unable to connect to 'Personal': Error 
> introspecting unknown summary field 'file_as_localized'

        Hi,
it seems to me that you took a backup from a newer evolution and 
restored it in an older evolution. There had been done some changes in 
the stored format in contacts between the two versions, which results 
in that "Detailed error message".

You cannot restore your contacts this way, the internal format change 
doesn't allow to restore from the newer evolution. What you can do is 
to use certain command line tools and restore your contacts by an 
import. That might be done this way:

a) close evolution and make sure evolution-addressbook-factory process
   is not running (possibly kill it, when it's shown in `ps ax | grep evolution`)
b) extract the contacts from the too new database:
   $ sqlite3 /home/ed/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system-address-book/contacts.db "SELECT VCARD from 
folder_id;">contacts.vcf
   By the way, I have it stored at ~/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system/.
c) move away the folder:
   /home/ed/.local/share/evolution/addressbook/system-address-book
   thus evolution will recreate it the next start
d) run evolution, switch to Contacts view and check you can select
   the On This Computer/Personal addressbook; it will be shown empty,
   but you will be able to select it and no error will be shown
e) from menu: File->Import->Single file->select the contacts.vcf
   from step b), the vCard format will be chosen for you; click Next,
   select On This Computer/Personal, then continue till the import
   wizard will not finish.

After this the Personal address book will show the contacts as before.

        Hope it helps,
        Milan