Migrating email, saving marriage

[okie2003]

My wife got a new laptop for Christmas to replace her old Dell Latitude D430. It has an old version of Netrunner on it with KDE 4.8.5 & Kontact 4.8.5. Prior to this computer, she ran some flavor of Linux (probably Mepis) on a desktop. When she inherited the D430 from our daughter I transferred her Kmail from the desktop to the laptop. The point is that the laptop has 10+ years of emails that she does not want to lose. (We’ve been married 44 years and I would hate to get a divorce over this.)

Problem #1: My plan was to export her Kontact data and import it into her new install on her new laptop. But from reading it appears that KDE 5 Plasma does not have a well-functioning version of Kontact. Some places say us it anyway while others say go with Thunderbird (she used that many years ago). What IS the recommended email client for KDE, KDE Neon or Kubuntu?

Problem #2: Her Kmail does not have an export messages option – Contacts & Calendar both have export options. How do I go about migrating her emails to another machine? In a July 2017 post GreyGeek answered a similar question with “Install: pimsettingexporter”. The only problem is that I cannot find it in the repositories that Netrunner has/had for this version. Can I get it elsewhere?

Thanks in advance for saving our marriage ;-)

[Snowhog]

Does she have a Google Account? If 'yes', select all the emails and forward them 'to herself' at the Gmail account.

[okie2003]

Snowhog, thanks for the suggestion. But I was hoping there was an easier way - 27,000 emails to forward and then resort? Better than losing them though.

[Rod J]

Can you use IMAP to access the email? I know all email providers don't have IMAP.

IMAP is the way to go for accessing mail on multiple PC's as it leaves the mail on the server (good for archiving), then when you need to migrate to a new PC just set up the existing account (I use Gmail). Then, depending on how much you want to download, set it up to download just the mail headers or full emails (within date limits you can adjust).

I use Thunderbird with Gmail so I don't know how you would get on with Kmail as I've hardly ever used it. I'm not sure if you can limit how much of the email it downloads and whether it can just download the email headers only.

This page might help: http://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2017/05/ho...p-account.html

[jglen490]

My wife got a new laptop for Christmas to replace her old Dell Latitude D430. It has an old version of Netrunner on it with KDE 4.8.5 & Kontact 4.8.5. Prior to this computer, she ran some flavor of Linux (probably Mepis) on a desktop. When she inherited the D430 from our daughter I transferred her Kmail from the desktop to the laptop. The point is that the laptop has 10+ years of emails that she does not want to lose. (We’ve been married 44 years and I would hate to get a divorce over this.)

Problem #1: My plan was to export her Kontact data and import it into her new install on her new laptop. But from reading it appears that KDE 5 Plasma does not have a well-functioning version of Kontact. Some places say us it anyway while others say go with Thunderbird (she used that many years ago). What IS the recommended email client for KDE, KDE Neon or Kubuntu?

Problem #2: Her Kmail does not have an export messages option – Contacts & Calendar both have export options. How do I go about migrating her emails to another machine? In a July 2017 post GreyGeek answered a similar question with “Install: pimsettingexporter”. The only problem is that I cannot find it in the repositories that Netrunner has/had for this version. Can I get it elsewhere?

Thanks in advance for saving our marriage ;-)

I haven't used Kmail in a very long time, but the folders with all the emails should be in her /home/<username> directory. This presupposes that the old Kmail and new Kmail use the same email storage method.

I don't remember the exact "dot" file that Kmail is under, but you should be able to backup all that data using rsync or some other decent backup tool to capture all the emails including any directory structure that may be used to organize (or not) the emails. It would be good to have a backup at this point anyway. From there, you should be able to restore/copy the directories and files to the new installation on her new laptop in the correct "dot" under her new /home/<username> directory.

[okie2003]

Rod J & jglen490, thanks for the input. Your ideas are helpful. I am just trying to relearn what I did several years ago. The problem is that a lot of information is from ~2008 and may be out of date. I will update on what I eventually do.

[okie2003]

Well, I think this http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/228838/index.html is the solution. Unfortunately, I broke my system before I could try it. Perhaps this will help someone.

I was getting short on space on my home partition so I moved .local to my data partition and linked it back to home. I don't see why it caused a problem, but Akonadi could not start and therefore Kmail. I still have the raw data, so I am still looking.

[okie2003]

Just a final follow up: I was able to drag and drop the email data into the new Kontact/Kmail locations and it appears not a thing was lost. I think I would use Thunderbird in the future, though I do like an integrated PIM.

Thanks for your input.