[Evolution-users] Stuck opening folder

[Milan Crha]

On Wed, 2025-08-20 at 00:16 +0200, Van Snyder via evolution-users
wrote:
> 1. How does Evolution decide which random folder to open in my
> MH archive whenever I start it?

	Hi,
I know you asked for it multiple times and I did not tell you that.
It's because it won't fix things much, not "forever". If you wish,
~/.config/evolution/mail/state.ini
contains where to open the app at. It's like:

  [Folder Tree]
  Selected=folder://c9c48c1f24cd9/INBOX/lists/evolution-list

> 3. How can I stop if from doing that?

Disable the account. It's the easiest and the most error prone
approach. Evolution doesn't pick a random folder, it just updates one
after another, depending how you've set the account to refresh the
folder contents, whether the folders are part of the search folder(s),
which folder was selected the last time,...

I gave you a way to disable the account by editing the .source files in
one of my previous mails. I did not say the file will contain the
folder names, I provided a string to search for to get to the offending
files.

I just now had an idea how to do it in the GUI. Simply temporarily
rename the MH directory on the disk, before you start Evolution. Say
you've it under ~/mail/mh-archive , then rename the directory to
~/mail/mh-archive.bak , then start Evolution, disable the MH account
and then rename the directory back to what it was.

> I use Evolution 3.56.1-1, but it doesn't have that problem

It has that problem too, but there are certain conditions to trigger
it. If you want to break also that version, then search the MH
directory for DIRNAME.cmeta files. When you'll delete them, together
with DIRNAME.ibex.* files, then you'll trigger the bug also in the
latest version of the evolution, supposing the
~/.local/share/evolution/mail/<mhaccountuid>/folders.db file is fully
populated and the folders contain some messages.

	Bye,
	Milan