Re: [Evolution] multiple pop accounts and legacy archive

[Peter Wurmsdobler <peter wurmsdobler org>]

Hello Pete,

many thanks for the comprehensive reply.

> > Whenever I set up POP accounts now, all received/sent emails are
> > swallowed by the "On This Computer" which I do _not_ want to see at
> > all. 
> Well, POP is a mail retrieval protocol. It retrieves your mail from a
> remote server and puts it into the local mail account.  That is how
> POP
> is supposed to work, and that is what Evolution does. Sorry if you
> don't want to see that.

Yes, I am aware that POP is a retrieval protocol and I am happy about
that; what I am not happy is that evolution funnels _all_ POP mails
into a single Folder named "On this computer", which contains the
logical folders "Inbox", "Sent" and others. 

Looking into $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local I see that there
are folders `cur`, `new` and `tmp` corresponding to the maildir for
`Inbox`; and there is a maildir folder for every logical folder such as
`.Sent` for "Sent". I would have expected that there would be a
dedicated `.Inbox`, too, to make things consistent.

> Help -> Contents -> Common Mail Questions and Problems
>                     -> Separating POP mail for more than one account
Thanks, I'll look into that.

> If you want to keep $HOME/Archive then you need to create a separate
> account that points to that directory.
>
> Edit -> Preferences -> Mail Accounts -> Add
>     Identity -> fill in information it's not important what.
>              -> untick  "Lookup mail server" at bottom
>
>     Receiving Email -> Server Type: Maildir format mail directories
>                     -> Mail Directory: select correct folder
>
>     Receiving Options -> uncheck all if your aren't receiving into it
>
>     Sending Email -> Server type: None
>
>     Account summary -> Name: fill in suitable name
I have tried that, i.e. create a folder $HOME/Mail/Archive, then add a
maildir account pointing to that; unfortunately, it does not create a
`Sent` folder in that logical maildir folder. And if I create a
subfolder "Sent", I get a `.Sent` on the file system which is not what
I want either.


> But in all honesty it looks like what you actually need is IMAP, not
> Really, the easiest way of achieving that is using IMAP - everything
> will be kept on the server and they are absolutely independent of
> Evolution. 
Not quite. I do like all my emails, past present and future to be
stored on my local file system. Ideally, I do not want any meta data of
the client contaminating that either. I will try the following

- create a maildir on $HOME/Mail/Received
- create a maildir on $HOME/Mail/Sent
- add a "Received" logical folder to my local

rm -r $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Received
rm -r $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Sent
ln -s $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Received
$HOME/Mail/Received
ln -s $HOME/.local/share/evolution/mail/local/.Sent $HOME/Mail/Received

This way, I hope, the maildir points to a more visible location in my
home folder which I can backup _without_ evolution metadata.

Kind regards,
peter