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How to Backup Evolution December 3, 2005

Posted by Carthik in guides, ubuntu.
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From an old mailing list gem, I got the right method to back up your Evolution (mail + calendar + contacts) data the right way:

Step 1:
Shutdown evolution and gconftool-2:

$gconftool-2 --shutdown
$evolution --force-shutdown

Step 2:
Create an archive with the data and configuration files:
Note: To completely save the Evolution data and configuration, you need to save the following directories/files:

  1. ~/.evolution/
  2. ~/.gconf/apps/evolution/
  3. ~/.gnome2_private/Evolution

The following command will take care of these
$cd
$tar -cvzf evolution-backup.tar.gz .evolution .gconf/apps/evolution .gnome2_private/Evolution

Now the file evolution-backup.tar.gz is the backup you want. You can move the data over to another Ubuntu computer if you like, and just un-tar the archive while in your /home/username/ directory to restore it.

To restore, use:

$gconftool-2 --shutdown
$evolution --force-shutdown
$tar xzf evolution-backup.tar.gz
$gconftool-2 --unload evolution_setting.xml
$gconftool-2 --load evolution_setting.xml

There are two evolution backup scripts that promise to make things easier for you:
Script 1 – in French and English
Script 2: In German

I really don’t see the need for a script, the scripts pretty much do the same thing as the commands above. If you run the commands one by one you will know if something fails immediately. However, I understand someone might want a script to make things easier. A script for backing up is kind of funny since if it fails, you will have no backups, so tread carefully ๐Ÿ™‚

Comments»

1. Pascal Klein - December 4, 2005

Another great thing to do, although slightly unrelated is to run a local mail server and keep everything centralized on one computer (make sure to back it up regularly though!) and then all users in that network can access their mail on any terminal, so long as dynamic links are made for each user’s account.

Like I said, somewhat unrelated, but useful I hope nonetheless. ๐Ÿ™‚

Oh, and by the way for Kubuntu users, Kontact uses Kmail, so everything for it ought to be, if I recall correctly, under ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail

Cheers,
Pascal

2. Elaine - December 4, 2005

Thanks for documenting this tip.

3. -= Gorik.com = - » Blog Archive » links for 2005-12-05 - December 5, 2005

[…] Ubuntu Blog ยป How to Backup Evolution (tags: linux evolution backup howto) […]

4. -= Gorik.com = - » Blog Archive » links for 2005-12-05 - December 5, 2005

[…] Ubuntu Blog ยป How to Backup Evolution (tags: linux evolution backup howto) […]

5. Chetan Bhargava - December 15, 2005

Pretty easy to find and good tip. Thanks.

6. Peter - December 18, 2005

Only thing missing is the mail accounts, having ~5 accounts is a PITA to set up again and again, especially for all family members who can’t do it themselves.

7. praetorian - December 23, 2005

i think instead of “From an old mailing list gem, I got the right method to back up you Evolution (mail + calendar + contacts) data the right way:” you meant to type “From an old mailing list gem, I got the right method to back up your Evolution (mail + calendar + contacts) data the right way:”

8. sven - December 30, 2005

thats the way i backuped my evolution always, iam just running the dapper flight testversion and it didnt work out. When i started evolution i saw the account wizzard. – mails and contacts where in place but lots of other things are gone when you backup it things like you did.

accounts data as well as categories data will be gone.

br, Sven

9. Rene - January 2, 2006

Well you don’t know how this little tip did help me as a Linux newbie (10 months only on Suse 9.3, escaped from Windows…). I had made a very bad partition set-up when I installed Suse in an extended partition on my dual-boot diskette-less laptop last year.

Wanting to re-install 9.3 completely, without loosing any corporate data, I go to the point where I needed a backup for my mail. Nowadays mail is my main tool, no way I could simply drop history.

Finding this tip enabled me to take a backup, test restore it on another PC (my “old” P3) also running Linux, and check for completion before destroying my partitions on my laptop for a new brand install, respecting partitions best practcies this time!

On my own experience, you just need to add the following (if you are in my case where you want to erase all and restore mail after a new install).

On the origin machine do as indicated above, plus:

Note down all your account settings in evolution before or after the backup. In addition you can reproduce them for full test on another machine to see you did not forget anything (did test the restore there as here under and it worked).

Save your tar.gz backup on another media (in my case an external USB disk)

On the destination machine (which can be same as origin if like me you reinstall all):

In Yast, at new installation, don’t forget to add evolution in the needed software (it is not installed by default with Suse).

Log as user in your account.
Launch evolution to create the initial folders.
(Maybe this step was not needed…)
Quit Evolution.
REDO the shutdown instructions as above (2).

Copy your backup archive to your home folder.
Open it with Ark.
In ARK go to settings and set overwrite files to yes (otherwise it will refuse to extract due to existing .evolution files)
Select all files, extract in “home/user”
Quit ARK.

Re-launch evolution and tadaaaaa !
All is there, including multiple mail folders and subfolders, calendar entries, and full contact list!

Went like a breeze. Lost nothing!
Now I’m on a refreshed Linux using 20Gigs (for swap, /, /var, /opt, /home, /usr, /boot) of the original 37.2 Gigs of my Windows XP laptop, instead of the ugly 4.3 Gigs for all of Linux in one / partition + swap.

The only thing I had to goback to Winbooze for, was that Yast was NOT capable of resizing my WIN D: partition (on the second Primary) to make even more space for my Penguin install.

This valuable tip saved me hours and probably bad turnaround ideas… Now I just need to learn and write a cron job and a script to backup my mail every week.

You know what? Did the same with my .mozilla folder and got all my favorites back in new install!

You learn every day with great guys on the Internet.
๐Ÿ™‚

10. KJS - January 31, 2006

Great post – this procedure works brilliantly to backup Evolution.

Cheers!

11. flevour - February 5, 2006
12. Dr.Allcome - February 7, 2006

Good thing ๐Ÿ˜‰ …

Debian rules ….

13. Adam Larl - March 19, 2006

This rocks! but has anyone had any sucess doing a brezzy backup to dapper restore?

I tried, my main address book came across, so did one of my calanders (not all of them) & my tasks also came across OK, no signatures though & I had to set up the accounts again.

14. Panama - March 24, 2006

When I did this all went well except for my calender. It didn’t save. How can I do this as well????

15. Jan - June 7, 2006

Hey, I’m not able to stop evolution daemons, they always restart a few seconds after again. Any ideas on this ?

I’m trying:

$ gconftool-2 –shutdown ; evolution –force-shutdown

thx ๐Ÿ™‚

16. kOoLiNuS - June 16, 2006
17. Duncan - June 20, 2006

Great, thanks. But it didn’t take my memos along for the ride to the new pc. So it’s not quite working yet.

18. JD - July 31, 2006

All I got was mail. No contacts, calendars, or memo’s.
I have about 200 contacts in my current (Breezy) address book.
I’m really a bit annoyed at this.

19. Rob - August 31, 2006

Addition:
To make it work completely issue these commands again AFTER copying the mentioned stuff:
$ gconftool-2 –shutdown
$evolution –force-shutdown

Don’t start evolution after copying because then the CreateAccount dialog appears.

20. Aleksandersen - October 19, 2006

How about Evolution 2.8.1? The one that will be shipping with Ubuntu 6.10. Will this backup procedure work for that version as well?

21. d - October 26, 2006

Good question Aleksandersen – it is not recommended to backup the .evolution folders especially when there will be new Evolution versions in the future. Conflict may arise very easily. Instead, there should be a simple export function that exports mailbox in a common and supported format. In that way, when there is a new Evolution version, a simple import will do the job. I do not understand why there is not an export function in evolution.

22. Dissapointed - November 7, 2006

I was considering switching to Evolution… But so much trouble and a possibility of problems with migration between versions for such a simple backup/restore action? No way, you must be joking…
Look how backup/restore is solved in TheBat! mail client. This and other
TheBat’s features should be considered as an example for other mail clients. That’s the best mail client I’ve ever seen. It’s sad that there’s no Linux version.

23. Steph - November 9, 2006

I’ve successfully restored Evolution 2.6.2 backup to 2.8.1 using the very same script. As far as “The Bat” is concerned it’s garbage, I wouldn’t have such a lousy mail client ported to Linux.

Cheers

24. Kevin P. Munn - December 15, 2006

For someone more used to “Simpler” methods (i.e. I use Outlook which is very easy to backup) and not being the SysAdmin.
How can I back up my Evolution? Using easy to follow instructions.
My boss wants me to back it up more frequently than Weekly!!
PS Evolution will NOT run on my WinXP laptop. Is it really that incompatable?

25. Sebastian - January 2, 2007

One can setup a new Accout using Maildir or MH format. Then copy your mails in that folder. It should be comaptible with other mail programs (thinking of pine or mutt, not outlook and TheBat!)

26. aggy - January 13, 2007

evolution 2.6
does not display contents of mail folders

thinking of archiving data , fresh install , import old
folders .

If correct way forward and you could fill in the details to my
e-mail it would be appreciated .

thx

27. .tommie - January 29, 2007

The above commands cannot be copy & pasted because of a typo!
$ evolution โ€“force-shutdown
should be:
$ evolution –force-shutdown

28. .tommie - January 29, 2007

Crap

29. Kevin P. Munn - February 23, 2007

I tried backing up using the above method, when I figured out the “English”, but got a return of:

“tar: .gnome2_private/evolution: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors”

What am I doing wrong? Am I doing it wrong?
I did get an “evolution-backup.tar.gz” file (???), but with the dialogue also given, can I take it that this is a Back Up?

30. penny - March 14, 2007

Wow thanks for this! After reinstalling Ubuntu today I tried to just replace the .evolution file from my backup, which restored my messages but not the address book so this really got me out of trouble.

31. Jacques Hien - April 9, 2007

Hi, i wrote a script which you can use to do this. It is called evolution-backup. It can be downloaded at http://www.bird-brain.de

32. carthik - April 9, 2007

Hi Folks,

I updated the post to eliminate the typos -especially the one where the two dashes “-” became one long dash (I think they call it an em-dash).
I also added specific instructions for restoring the data (thank you for pointing it out, Rene).
Lastly, I added links to the two scripts that promise to do the same work.

Thank you for all your comments. I appreciate your help.

33. Functional Autonomy » Blog Archive » Switch: Windows > Ubuntu - April 15, 2007

[…] to back up data via the terminal rather than moving icons around in Nautilus. See, for example, the procedure for Evolution. I grumbled at this initially, but by the first time I’d done it I realised why it was […]

34. sakthi - May 3, 2007

Very useful blog…..

Just switched from Fedora 6 to Ubuntu 7.04 was looking how to restore my evolution mail folders. Luckily found your blog. Thank you very much

35. IntuitiveNipple - May 21, 2007

Great tip! Took about 2 minutes to move all the IMAP mail accounts, filters, messages, tasks, contacts and calendars from Evolution on an Ubuntu 6.10 PC to a Feisty 7.04 PC.

36. Switching: Windows to Ubuntu - July 2, 2007

[…] to back up data via the terminal rather than moving icons around in Nautilus. See, for example, the procedure for Evolution. I grumbled at this initially, but by the first time Iโ€™d done it I realised why it was better: […]

37. Backup Evolution mails « Open Source & Freedom - July 5, 2007
38. Myztry - September 4, 2007

How I wish the Ubuntu desktop environment could escape the ’nuffy’ habits inherited from Windows. Backup/restore should be easier. It should be in all data based sofware. At the very least as a file>backup option.

Better still part of the package manager. Like the install and uninstall scripts. “apt -databackup/restore package destination”. This would be a dream come true. No more wondering which services to shutdown, or other quirks.

39. Ubuntu - My experience - September 7, 2007

[…] to back up data via the terminal rather than moving icons around in Nautilus. See, for example, the procedure for Evolution. I grumbled at this initially, but by the first time Iโ€™d done it I realised why it was better: […]

40. student - September 7, 2007

Thanks for the tip! Worked perfectly

41. sendderek - October 11, 2007

Thanks for the tip! I’m glad to have seen it so quickly on top of the google search just in time for an upgrade to Ubuntu Gutsy!

42. tim - October 13, 2007

Thank you very much! It works perfectly. I am migrating to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon so I need to backup my data. ๐Ÿ™‚

43. Graham - November 23, 2007

THANK YOU…THANK YOU…THANK YOU

I’m impressed! I have switched to Linux having been brought up on Windows and have remained skeptical!

However, your guidance has just allowed me to back up my mail and reinstall it on the new PC. I am now (very) happily running on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (which seems to be a great improvement on Feisty).

While I was initially very wary of trusting advice from the Linux Community, I can now start to see how this co-operation far surpasses what Microsoft can offer.

Once again, many thanks for your help with this.

44. Seul - November 26, 2007

Cheers!

45. Charlie Green - January 25, 2008

Hi there Ubuntuites,

Could someone out there sum up the final solution of this blog??
I am just a normal civilian that wants to upgrade to 7.10 from 7,04 and take my Evolution contacts with me.

Tried the direct upgrade over net, my connect is just too slow!!

Read that there is an Alternative CD / DVD? Is this the normal DVD you can order from Conical or what??

Tried the Copy Contacts menue in Actions. Hopeless! Beginning to suspect that Bill Gates has joined the staff. Import / export of email contacts should be a given. Not a programing session!

Much of Linux if afflicted with “Programers Syndrom”. I suspect that most Linux fans want to keep it that way. If you really want to kill MicroSoft you have to getoverit! 95% of the users just want to “Use it”, not learn how it works!!!!

As to my problem, I guess I can just print out the contact list as a paper directory. Over next year, as I need an address, I can look it up and type it in. This is the sort of crap that made me switch to Linux! Yes, it’s still a work in progress.

Uncle Charlie

46. Sabine - March 12, 2008

Thanks, found exactly what I was looking for.
Am particularly thankful for the detailed description suitable for newbies.
Now lets hope it’ll work after upgrading my ancient linux version!

47. JayEff - March 25, 2008

But what if you do encounter an error, how does one deal with it?

I hit this error, but I have no idea what it means or if it means the migration was successful or not

#gconftool-2 –unload evolution_setting.xml
I/O warning : failed to load external entity “evolution_setting.xml”
Failed to open `evolution_setting.xml’: No such file or directory

Where is this file supposed to be/come from?

48. JayEff - March 25, 2008

Ah you missed saving the settings in your instructions. Figured it out, bad instructions….bad!!

49. Belajar Linux at DedyIsn World - April 1, 2008

[…] 3. Back Up Email in EvolutionBackup Email in Evolution […]

50. Ravan - April 6, 2008

JayEff, could you please explain?? What did you save and how? I get tis error but cannot follow your solution :/

51. mark - May 5, 2008

my evolution file is becoming huge due to too much email.
I’d like to archive it and start a fresh file with the contacts and configuration but without the old mail.

52. Azad - June 16, 2008

I am having the same problem as Ravan and JayEff, and, like Ravan can’t figure out where JayEff found this settings file. Any help would be appreciated.

53. hajdyhou - June 24, 2008

I think the easiest way for a ‘normal user’ to backup Evolution
is to install the backup-plugin, e.g. via this command:
sudo apt-get install evolution-plugins
(or via synaptic). After that, you can simply do backups
and restores via the ‘File – Backup/Restore Settings…’ menu.

54. hajdyhou - June 24, 2008

I think the easiest way for a ‘normal user’ to backup Evolution
is to install the backup-plugin, e.g. via this command:
sudo apt-get install evolution-plugins
(or via synaptic). After that, you can simply do backups
and restores via the ‘File – Backup/Restore Settings…’ menu.

55. Migrar de Evolution a Thunderbird « Ubuntu Life - June 26, 2008

[…] informacion | Backup de Evolution Enlace | Migrar de Evolution a […]

56. Alan - July 4, 2008

HELP PLEASE! I am an Evolution gui-only user and tried to backup using the method: File/backup settings etc and Evolution closes down but no backup file is produced. The backup plug-in is ticked in Gedit so I can only assume it is installed.
I have purchased a new computer and want to transfer my contacts/mail/calendar to the new Evolution installation.
It seems others have the same issue as I do.
Pity you can’t save the contacts at least to a .csv file.
Does the same problem exist with the Mozilla email client?

57. Alan - July 4, 2008

Further to the above:
I tried the same gui back-up process on my new installation of Evolution and it produced the expected evolution-backup.tar.gz file. So is there something wrong with my first installation of Evolution? Both are same version 2.22.2.
How to fix it please?

58. Jeff - July 4, 2008

#gconftool-2 โ€“unload evolution_setting.xml
I/O warning : failed to load external entity โ€œevolution_setting.xmlโ€
Failed to open `evolution_setting.xmlโ€™: No such file or directory

i have this error, too. JayEff is right, the instructions are somehow deficient.

however, JayEff’s comment is deficient, too. he references saving some settings, but who the heck knows what JayEff is talking about since getting his dig in on the instructions was more important than clarifying the missing data?

i still can’t figure out this turd of a back up / restore process so i can’t move up to 8.04.

this is very frustrating.

59. Jeff - July 4, 2008

i got it working.

1. i did everything as root in my user account (the user where i would restore my email).

2. i changed permissions on .evolution and .gconf using
$sudo chown -R user:user .evolution
$sudo chown -R user:user .gconf

3. i logged into user and fired up evolution. i went through the initial login process (enter email address, pop server, smtp server, time zone) and when i was done, all my emails were present. other stuff might have worked, but i didn’t check it.

i still got the no file found error while as root and while as user for the following instructions:

$gconftool-2 –unload evolution_setting.xml
$gconftool-2 –load evolution_setting.xml

apparently, getting these instructions to work aren’t important for getting emails backed.

60. MikeH - July 30, 2008

As hajdyhou said in post 54, the easiest way to do this is to use the built-in backup and restore options.

I guess the original blog entry and many of the comments relate to earlier versions of Evolution where this feature did not exist.

In fact, it didn’t exist in the standard Evolution 2.10.1 that comes as part of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty, but I found it could be added from Synaptic as evolution-plugins-experimental – not evolution-plugins.

I wanted to import the data into Evolution 2.0.0.16 that’s part of the Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy release. On that version of Evolution, the backup/restore feature comes as part of the standard built.

It all worked flawlessly. All I had to do was re-apply my passwords the first time I accessed each mail account. I guess that’s more secure than permitting the passwords to be transferred as part of the backup/restore process.

61. Arno Teigseth - September 30, 2008

This worked great for me, however I didn’t see the need for untarring anything.

-The three directories tarred,
-I copied the tar over to the new machine,
-ran evolution and when it asked me to
-recover from a backup I selected the tar file.

All worked, also MยคExchange2007 accounts and their saved passwords ๐Ÿ˜€

LDAP authentication breaks from time to time, but I tend to think that’s an M$ issue…

62. John Rose - October 10, 2008

This backup script is missing a vital step just before the tar command:
gconftool-2 –unload evolution_setting.xml
This tar line should have evolution_setting.xml added at the end.

This file is vital in the restore. If you don’t have it and you are starting with a new Evolution (i.e. your Address Book % Email folders are empty), you will get nothing restored with the following messages:
#gconftool-2 โ€“unload evolution_setting.xml
I/O warning : failed to load external entity โ€œevolution_setting.xmlโ€
Failed to open `evolution_setting.xmlโ€™: No such file or directory

Obviously if your Address Book & Email folders are already present, they will be OK after the restore because nothing will have happened.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I suspect that the inbuilt backup & restore (in Evolution) in Hardy will work and thus these scripts will bot be needed. However, I’m still running the Backup script just in case!

63. Copying Evolution’s Mail and Configuration Files | Trevor's IT Blog - February 12, 2009

[…] Others have recommended shutting down the Evolution and Gnome settings servers on the new machine, before installing the new files.ย  Afterward, the servers can be restarted, like so: $gconftool-2 –shutdown $evolution –force-shutdown $tar -zxvf ~/evolution-backup.tar.gz -C ~/ $gconftool-2 –unload evolution_setting.xml $gconftool-2 –load evolution_setting.xml […]

64. Nathan’s Blog » Blog Archive » Move Evolution data to new Ubuntu install - April 2, 2009

[…] Evolution stores the account data in GConf which is slightly trickier to copy. This article explains the process, but it can boiled down to […]

65. Ron Rafajko - October 5, 2009

My Ubuntu 9.04 had an ungraceful shutdown and now when I launch Evolution I get the CreateAccount dialog. Is there a file I need to delete or move so my previous setup can be read?

THANKS!

~Ron in AF, Utah

66. 167.083333333333 - October 22, 2009

From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, few liberal talk hosts had national exposure. ,

67. Ron Rafajko - October 28, 2009

Is that why my Evolution is not working?

68. Evolution A$$ F**ker - November 12, 2009

I did not know that evolution was so F***ed up. With thunderbird, just replacing the existing directory with backup serves it. But this f**king evolution nearly had me crush its b*lls.

69. Evolution A$$ F**ker - November 12, 2009

@author

Thank you. That really helped.

70. borut - November 18, 2009

i’m a simple gui user having difficulties restorin backuped data.
When selecting backuped file (tar) all i get is “Please select a valid backup file to restore.” WTF? I’m using it on my work and i really need the stored data…
I’m using evolution 2.28.1 on Karmic koala.
Help!
thx

71. Ron Rafajko - December 2, 2009

My tar -cvzf evolution-backup.tar.gz .evolution .gconf/apps/evolution .gnome2_private/Evolution had an error:

.gconf/apps/evolution/memos/
.gconf/apps/evolution/memos/%gconf.xml
tar: .gnome2_private/Evolution: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

I have nothing in my .gnome2_private/Evolution directory. Trying the command without that.

72. Ron Rafajko - December 2, 2009

Trying to restore I ran:

$gconftool-2 –unload evolution_setting.xml
$gconftool-2 –load evolution_setting.xml

and got errors:

$ gconftool-2 –unload evolution_setting.xml
I/O warning : failed to load external entity “evolution_setting.xml”
Failed to open `evolution_setting.xml’: No such file or directory

$ gconftool-2 –load evolution_setting.xml
I/O warning : failed to load external entity “evolution_setting.xml”
Failed to open `evolution_setting.xml’: No such file or directory

Opened Evolution and it wants to restore or setup again.

73. Ron Rafajko - December 2, 2009

I have no evolution_setting.xml file, even after putting bogus information in the builder to be able to see my mail.

74. srikanth - December 29, 2009

what is the size of evoluation in ubuntu.if it is full what happens

75. shaneL - February 3, 2010

handy post ๐Ÿ™‚ just been fiddling with a fresh re-install of hardy (after 2 yrs of upgrades and unused apps, amazing the difference it made!) FYI, I achieved some of this process through the GUI (though mainly because I’d already tarred and extracted an entire backup of / to a second HDD so just had to ‘drag and drop’ the few folders). Figured the system monitor ‘end task’ option could also stop the evolution and gconftool-2 processes… though not sure if this is the advisable way!
anyhow, I had to make sure that those processes were stopped as per instructions, then copied said folders over and did a restart to get success!
I could not find that problematic evolution_setting.xml file on my system which is why i didn’t use the terminal commands to finish the process, but the restart worked. I had previously tried just opening evolution from the icon after copying the folders, but like previous comments suggested, this resulted in the ‘new account’ window turning up.
IN a nutshell – if others have probs with the missing evolution_setting.xml file and messages, maybe you can follow the instructions above up to the point of the “tar xzf….” and then just do a restart from there. (dunno if just logging back on would work, i’m past the point of having to try that!)

76. Jinekolojik Kanserler - March 19, 2010

with aesthetics on this site … thank you very much for all managers

77. Loxosceles Laeta - June 12, 2010

Excelent. In Ubuntu 10.04 works. Thanks.

78. Rudolf Vavruch - June 20, 2010

Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.10 to Linux Mint 9, I made a backup using Evolution but somehow the backup got broken.

Luckily I had backuped the my entire /home directory.

I used this method to create “evolution-backup.tar.gz” and then when I started up Evolution I simply imported it and everything was as before.

One thing to note: I couldn’t find “.gnome2_private/Evolution” but it worked fine regardless.

Thanks,

79. Eric Polin - July 29, 2010

Thanks!
Also found a ~/.gnome2/accels/evolution dir.

80. porno sikiลŸ - September 27, 2010

i think instead of โ€œFrom an old mailing list gem, I got the right method to back up you Evolution (mail + calendar + contacts) data the right way:โ€ you meant to type โ€œFrom an old mailing list gem, I got the right method to back up your Evolution (mail + calendar + contacts) data the right way:โ€

81. vidyadhara buddhiraju - October 18, 2010

I am doing something more under the hood kind of a thing.

You can add a new account in evolution
Edit -> Preferences -> Mail Accounts -> Add

Type in whatever you care with no server information.

The go in back to the thing and edit receiving email. set server type to standard unix mbox spool directory.

And choose the directory where the mail files are located. in my case, the following directory ~/backup/.evolution/mail/local

And the thing picks up all of my old emails.

82. Bob Esponja - February 5, 2011

Great tutorial! Thank you very much very usefull, I lost al my emails some months ago, and was a really disaster for me. Bye!

83. xvan - March 26, 2011

If you have a backup of your whole home, or at least of your ~/.gconf folder you can still create the evolution_setting.xml file by:

gconftool-2 –config-source=xml:readwrite:$(old_home)/.gconf –dump /apps/evolution > evolution_setting.xml

84. ukrayna vizesi - July 30, 2011

ฤฐYฤฐ

85. arkadaลŸ - August 5, 2011

teลŸekรผrler bilgi iรงin elinize saฤŸlฤฑk

86. Carl - October 14, 2011

I upgraded Ubuntu this evening, and all my Evolution mail is lost. Very strange. Can’t think why that would happen.

87. Ray Deyoung - January 29, 2012

Great, thanks for sharing this post.Thanks Again.

88. drumdotcom777 - March 13, 2012

I recently lost my computer to the processor being damaged. I managed to save the hard drive which has my copy of evolution mail. When I installed Ubuntu on my new computer, I am having trouble accessing my old email files.

Since I can’t open the files and do a proper back up, any advice on how I can restore my email box from the old “.evolution” folder in the home directory on the old hard drive?

89. Stephan van Ingen - March 20, 2012

Carl: maybe you installed it with another end-user-language? Folder names change then and I think messages are in another folder tree (user@localhost…): possible?

90. mice1kim.jigsy.com - April 12, 2013

Very energetic article, I loved that a lot. Will there be a part 2?

91. Marcos Kaempfer - July 16, 2013

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