Re: [Evolution] Export message filters?

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Sun, 2018-07-29 at 18:00 -0400, John Lewis wrote:
> How do I export message filters in Evolution?

I have a feeling that exporting the filters is easy, importing them
elsewhere into a different instance of Evolution is not.

The issue is that things like "destination folder" in the filter uses
the internal Evolution name for the folder and those names are not
consistent between copies of Evolution on different machines. When an
account is created in Evolution it is given a unique name and the
folder URI is related to that name.  Consequently the actions will not
be easily transferable between machines.

It works with the Backup/Restore because the whole configuration,
including the internal account names, are restored so the folder URIs
are the same.

If you want to see this, look at the filter configuration file at
~/.config/evolution/mail/filters.xml and the list of names of the
accounts in ~/.config/evolution/sources/

Note, moving the filter.xml around *may* work if it is simple or you
are using only local folders, but it will, in all likelihood, not work.
And it will certainly not work as a generic solution in all cases.

TBH, what would be really useful would be a way of printing out the
filters in some humanly readable form.  I don't mind creating the
filters from scratch (it's not exactly arduous), but there's no generic
way of displaying/printing all of them on one machine so I can recreate
them elsewhere.

P.