Evolution moving from mbox to Maildir

Support & Help Requests
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I started up Evolution, to get a message that it was migrating from mbox to maildir format, and was this ok? Yes or Exit.
On continuing, I got the message "Failed to refresh folder “local_mbox : folder://..." and a fresh install of Evolution. While this has been a trusty mail client for 20 years, when that 20 years of email disappears (including all sent mail) it's a little disconcerting. Fortunately, I did an Evolution backup two days ago <phew!> but I was wondering if anyone else has had this problem. And, ... is my restored email now in the new format? Many thanks!

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Not sure I can help much, but I use Evolution daily and have not had any issues like this.

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I don't use Evolution, but I have seen these formats in Thunderbird.

The way to tell is:

Maildir

Each message is a separate file.

inbox/
├── cur/      # Read email
├── new/      # Unread/new email
└── tmp/      # Temporary files for mail delivery
sent/
├── cur/, new/, tmp/  # Same again

mbox

Each mailbox/folder is a single file.

myemails/inbox.mbox
myemails/sent.mbox

Personally I prefer maildir since it's quicker to backup, easier to maintain and less likely for a single file to become corrupted. I think maildir is more modern, and mbox is considered more legacy.

Thunderbird has an option in Settings → General to set the message store per account for new accounts. I do vaguely recall migrating myself but can't remember what I did. No idea about Evolution's options.

On continuing, I got the message "Failed to refresh folder “local_mbox : folder://..." and a fresh install of Evolution.

Suppose if clicking Evolution did finish migrating the format, then tried to continue like it was business as usual (unable to find the old format), does everything go back to normal after restarting Evolution?

A potentially safer approach might be to:

  1. Create a local account (local folders) with the maildir format.
  2. Move/copy your main folders/emails across.
  3. Delete the main account (mbox based)
  4. Re-create the main account with the maildir format and move/copy everything back.

Or if it's all in the cloud (e.g. SMTP), simply delete and re-add the account.

That's assuming Evolution gives a choice of what format to use, and assumes converting an existing one wasn't as reliable (I vaguely feel my migration was something like this)

Kudos on having a backup! I can imagine the gut-wrench when everything just disappears! :scream:

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4

Thanks for the replies chaps - glad to see Evolution being used, it really is a rock-steady piece of software! I have to hold my hands up, it was all my fault: I was too fanatical about clearing up empty directories and I'd issued a "find . -empty -type d -delete" in my home directory. Hence the backup. I'm guessing this rm'ed something in the .evolution directory. My bad!
Thanks again!

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5

Thanks for following up!

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