Solved - Question: How to export Kmail messages?

[rusty]

Hi, hope it's OK to ask questions here also - could not find a better place to ask this

cause of some problems re loading KDE HH 4.1 (I got stuck in 4.03!!!), I need to repartition my hard disk and reinstall Kmail.
How can I export the KMail info (messages expecially) from my current Kmail to a file so that I can copy it to another PC and recopy it back once I have repartitioned my hard disk? I'm using Kmail 1.9.9.
rusty

[Fintan]

Re: Question: How to export Kmail messages?

All of your kmail stuff (amongst others) reside in /home/username/.kde/shaer/apps.

.kde is a hidden file so you will have toactivate view->hidden files in dolphin / konqueror.

Just make a backup of your .kde file to a cd or whatever and move the /share/apps files you need over to your new .kde after you install /reinstall.

Hope that helps

[rusty]

Re: Question: How to export Kmail messages?

All of your kmail stuff (amongst others) reside in /home/username/.kde/shaer/apps.

.kde is a hidden file so you will have toactivate view->hidden files in dolphin / konqueror.

Just make a backup of your .kde file to a cd or whatever and move the /share/apps files you need over to your new .kde after you install /reinstall.

Hope that helps

Thanx - will try it and come back - does the same apply to my thunderbird mail? rusty

[MCB]

Re: Question: How to export Kmail messages?

May I suggest you try Fintan's recipe first before wiping the hard disk. I recently had to do the same and the method he suggests did not work for me. Try a s a may, I could not get my new installation to read the re-imported /.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail files. Fortunately, I run a parallel system on a laptop, so was able to recover the mails, using a method found on an ubuntu forum. Can tell you more if you need it.

[rusty]

Re: Question: How to export Kmail messages?

"Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more...." jup, please tell me more - I have just copyed everything but not repartitioned just yet - would have done so over the weekend - so tell me how u worked it out.
rusty

[MCB]

Re: Question: How to export Kmail messages?

Quite possibly, Fintan's recipe will work, so try that first.
In my case, when I copied my kmail folders back into the new install /.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail directory, the folder structure showed up ok in kontakt, but each folder showed only one message (when, obviously, there had been millions...). So I did:
In the 'copy from' system, Kontakt e-mail, right-click on Local Folders, create a new folder in format 'mbox', name it distictively.
Copy messages to be moved from their original into the new folder.
Close (Quit) Kontakt;
Navigate as root to /home/whatever/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail, show hidden files
find the file with the distinctive folder name (there will be 3 files with the same name and a suffix '*.index', which you can ignore) and move it to a USB stick or some other portable medium.
In the target (copy to) system, again as root, navigate to /home/whatever/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail and drop the file in.
Right-click to the properties of the file and change the permissions from root to user.
Safe and close. When you open Kontakt e-mail, the new folder should show up under 'Local Folders', with all the mails present and accounted for.
Repeat for as many folders as you want to copy.
It's a bit of a work around, but at least it gave me all my e-mail back.
Hope you don't need it, but if you do, it works for you.
Good luck!