Re: [Evolution] Transfer Evolution data

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Thu, 2021-02-11 at 15:19 +0800, JPM wrote:
> I currently use Evolution 3.10.4 ... to a new Evolution 3.38.3-1 

        Hi,
there's a very long gap between the two versions, I'm afraid there's
even no migration code from such an old version to the latest stable.
Some internal formats changed too.

You can try to create a backup file in the 3.10 and restore from it in
the 3.38 the first time you run it in the Mail view (like from a
terminal with: evolution -c mail). If that fails, you can cleanup the
Evolution data (except of GSettings/DConf):
https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/data-storage.html
and start from scratch. That requires to run
`evolution --force-shutdown`, thus also the background processes are
started with clean data.

Being all your accounts remote (IMAP/EWS/...), then I suggest to simply
recreate those from scratch. With respect of calendars, contacts and
such, right-click the calendar/address book/... in the respective view
and pick "Save as...", which should save the whole calendar/book/...
into a single file, which can be imported in the new version. Again, if
those are remote calendars/books/... then just add them manually.

I do not recall, does 3.10.x save its data into ~/.evolution/ or under
~/.local/share/evolution/? One of these locations contain local data,
those under On This Computer. For example mail is at ..../mail/local/
subdirectory. I do not know whether 3.10 used Maildir or still MBOX,
but you can create a temporary account in the new version and point it
to the copy of that directory, which will let you copy/move the mail
from the directory copy to the current On This Computer location. I say
"directory copy", because it's better to work on those files from a
copy, because you'd have the original files in case anything goes
wrong.

All of this only if the backup/restore won't work for you.

        Bye,
        Milan