[Evolution-users] Failure to backup.

[Matthias Kuntze]

Am Samstag, dem 28.02.2026 um 08:03 +0800 schrieb Luigi Cantoni via
evolution-users:
> On Fri, 2026-02-27 at 15:09 -0700, Craig Jameson via evolution-users
> wrote:
> > Greetings all;
> > 
> > I used to run RedHat 9.  I recently upgraded to RedHat 10.  In the
> > process of setting up my computer to install RedHat 10, I wrecked
> > my
> > RedHat 9 install . . . before I backed up my Evolution data.
> > 
> > So, all of my Evolution data is in my home directory.  But, my new
> > Evolution install doesn't recognize any of it (emails, contacts,
> > etc.).
> > There has to be a way to get my new Evolution install
> > 
> > 	Evolution 3.58.3 (by Flathub.org)
> > 
> > to recognize the old Evolution files in the home directory.  But, I
> > can't find a thread on this.
> > 
> > Any ideas?
> 
> Hi Craig,
> If this happened to me and no one gave me better advice I would use
> Cat FILES >>Folder.name
> All the emails for a single folder in evolution are in a folder of
> the same name with "." in front to hide them.
> If you join all the emails together then you create one large mbox
> style file which you can use to be loaded up with evolution into a
> "NEW" folder you have made with the same name. You may need to insert
> a blank like between each mail to make sure they don't just become
> one GREAT big email.
> That should get your emails all loaded.
> This should show you all your existing folders etc
> l -a ~/.local/share/evo*/mail/local/
> 
> As to the contacts and calendar I cannot offer any useful advice.
> I hope someone else says to you "here is the easy way to help just do
> ...."
> If I am wrong in my suggestion how to at least get your emails loaded
> then as always backup and take care and sorry from me.
> 
> -- 
> 
Dear Craig,

With the few information you've provided, it's very difficult to get an
impression of your real situation. Since you use Flatpak in the new
version, the data is being read from "~/.var/app/org.gnome.Evolution/".
In the old version the data may be stored in
"~/.local/share/evolution". If that is true, you might create a
".tar.gz" archive, which can be loaded by the Flatpak version as a
backup with a few workarounds (e.g. dont forget the evolution.dir
content). Which version did you use before?

Alternatively, it's possible to copy the data into mbox files and
import them, as Luigi suggested (the line with "From" without the ":"
has then to be added). Calendar and address books can also be created
and loaded from their respective files (ics,vcd). However, this is the
more complicated fallback solution if the backup method described above
causes too many problems for you. But then you have to do a lot
manually.

Rgds, Matthias
> 
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