[solved, sort of...] Download old emails from POP3-server?

[Chopstick]

Hi,

My question:
I would like to know how to tell kmail to download emails from a pop3 account again, which have already been downloaded before (but deleted locally).

Background:
I recently made a clean install on my laptop. In the process, when I set up the spam filter in kmail/kontact, it removed all my existing email (I don't know why... did not happen again). I was able to restore my inbox from backup except for a few more recent emails, which are still stored on the server of my pop3 account. These emails have been downloaded before (before the spam filter wiped out everything), but I would like to download them again, so that I have a complete record of recent emails. About one week is missing at the moment.

Can anyone help me? I tried deleting the (receiving) account in kmail settings and setting it up again, but that did not help.

Thanks,
Chopstick

[claydoh]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

if the mail was downloaded from a pop server, then they are no longer on the pop server, unless you have set up the mail client to NOT delete them on the server (you did not specify if you set it up this way). If they were still there, recreating the account from scratch should make any existing mail to be downloaded from the server.


I just moved my last remaining mail account to imap, my ISP just began offering it, but if memory serves, I think you can try right-clicking on a folder from the pop account (in kmail) and look for Properties >> Maintenance. From there you can rebuild the index files, which may be what is causing the mails to be marked as 'read' in kmail


One other thing to try is to again delete the account, exit from kmail, then go to ~/.kde/share/apps/ and either move or rename the kmail folder, then try to recreate the account. This I think is just a more brutal way of recreating the mail folder's index file, however.

[Chopstick]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

Thanks for the suggestions claydoh! I've set kmail to not delete messages, so they are still on the server (I've verified that by logging in and checking manually).
Unfortunately my ISP does not offer IMAP free of charge...
I've tried recreating the index but to no avail. Resetting the email status on the server side (with telnet and pop-commands) didn't help either.
I'm somewhat reluctant to remove the whole kmail folder because I still have a couple of other accounts that work fine and changing all the settings is a pain.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

This might be a very long shot but if all else fails you might just try contacting them to set up some kind of "one off" authorization to get the mail or something.

Surprisingly, a teacher at my college had a somewhat similar thing happened and did that and, surprisingly, they gave her access. She was on the phone with them doing it. She was totally blown away that they did such a nice thing.

woodsmoke

[claydoh]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

If you temporarily move the kmail folder, and then recreate your one account in a fresh setup, and it works, you can then move the second folder, restore the first, and then use the import function to grab mails from the second. Or try thunderbird or claws, or some other email client to see if you can download them, then export/import, I can't think of anything else to try, actually.

[Chopstick]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

Claydoh, what you describe also occurred to me as a last resort. Somehow I think it should be possible to do this in a more elegant way... But if no one else has a better idea, I may try it.

[woodsmoke]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

sometimes brute force works best
woodsmoke

[josefko]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

It depends on how many mails are you talking about. Maybe you can send them to yourself one by one.

[Detonate]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

I don't know what email account you are using, but in mine, gmail, for example you can go to the web interface, open the "Trash" folder and move all of the messages in trash to the "Inbox". Next time you download your mail, they should all be there.

[Chopstick]

Re: Download old emails from POP3-server?

@ josefko: approx. 100 emails.
@ Detonate: the emails are not in my trash folder, they are in the inbox but are not being downloaded - that's exactly my problem!

I've decoded to go the brute-force way as suggested by claydoh; I got all my messages back now. The only complaint is that kmail forgot which messages I already replied to (or forwarded), i.e. I don't have these little arrow icons. But I guess I can live with that...

The thread is kinda obsolete now, but I would not call that solved...

Chopstick