[SOLVED] Import of an old e-mail database

[zugunder]

Hi,

As I recently made a fresh install of Mageia 3 (after staying with Mageia 1) I'd like to import my Kmail database preserved from Mageia 1 to Mageia 3 Kmail. Will it be enough just to copy the content of /home/user/.kde4/shared/ apps/kmail into the new Kmail folder? And just in case - is it possible to export Kmail database to Thunderbird format if I decide to switch to Thunderbird?

Thank you.

[djennings]

As far as I remember Kmail went to a mysql/akonadi/nepomuk (yuck) database between mga1 and mga2. It was that which forced me to give up using kmail.

Maybe kmail is better at updating old formats now than it used to be, but as a last resort you could always set up an imap server and drag and drop from your current kmail folders to the imap server, and then drag and drop back into updated kmail or Thunderbird if you prefer. I think that is what I had to resort to in the end because Thunderbirds importing facility was broken.

[jiml8]

Kmail2 on Mageia 2 with KDE 4.8 was virtually unusable. Very buggy, undependable...and it was because of that akonadi/nepomuk stuff. I very quickly was searching for a way to get shut of Kmail - which I have used and liked for many years.

The effort of ditching Kmail convinced me to wait for Mageia 3 to see if things were working by KDE 4.10. Given that I deployed Mageia 2 in February of this year, that wait was acceptably short, though I was gritting my teeth every day when I tried to use Kmail.

Kmail2 in Mageia 3 is MUCH better. It is not fully reliable yet, but it is close. Compared to the level of effort associated with moving tens of thousands of emails to another client, the fairly minor remaining issues can be easily tolerated, IMO.

To answer OP's original question, there is an importer with Kmail and it kind of works. I did my import using KDE 4.8 and it was an unpleasant experience. The upside is that your original mails are untouched; the import operation copies them into a new location and places them in a directory structure identified as Kmail-Import. The downside (in KDE 4.8 at least) was that if you did it wrong the first time you could not attempt to redo it; the importer would run once and once only. There was a solution to that which consisted of deleting a file someplace inside the ~/.kde4 directory structure, but I don't recall off-hand what that file was. Googling will help. I would expect the situation has improved somewhat with KDE 4.10...certainly, the rest of the Kmail experience has improved A LOT with that move.

[zugunder]

Thank you guys for explanations and sharing your experience.
You've just proved the worst thing I could think of, unfortunately . Either the new Kmail is good and easy-to-handle or total crap - I'd have an answer to that: keep it or abandon it forever. But here I got stuck: if it is almost OK and I manage to import my e-mail database, where is the guarantee that the next time I upgrade (to Mageia 5 or whatever it will be) it will not cause severe problems like in KDE4.8, but this time with more e-mails accumulated? It is not the question I am addressing anyone, just reasoning . In addition to that, AFAIK, Qt5 and KDE5 are already somewhere within reach, so I expect the same problems as we had experienced with transition to KDE4...
So right now I am leaning to trying Thunderbird (or something from Gnome) and if I find it stable enough, I'm afraid, I'll have to leave KDE as I have pretty bad experience with it after switching from 4.6.5 to 4.10. It's a pity of course, mostly because of the style I like and a set of application I've been using for years, but what's the point to keep using them if they are getting more and more buggy?

Once again, thank you.

[zugunder]

I attempted to import old Kmail database via new Kmail Import Wizard, but it seems to be simply nonfunctional. I have no idea how I could specify the path to the database, as I have not found any reference to mail import in Kmail menus (apart from Import Wizard).
If I have time I'll ask on KDE forum, otherwise - bye-bye, Kmail2...

[zugunder]

UPD.

I must admit that due to my inattention I missed the option "Import Messages..." under "File" menu. It is created to deal with various mail database formats, i.e. it's exactly what I need.
I'll try to import my e-mail and will report the results.

[Bequimao]

To export and import mails

You mark the folder in the old instance with the mouse and export it clicking the right button of the mouse. I myself use only IMAP accounts, so the problem does not occur to me.

Best regards,
Bequimão

[zugunder]

I managed to import my old e-mail database into Mageia 3 KMail without serious problems, seems like nothing was lost. There was only one strange glitch when after import I tried to rename the target directory and after that all the mail disappeared from it. However, after I renamed it back to initial name, the both old and new directories appeared, with all mail present in a new one. Have no idea what might have happened, maybe the import (or indexing) was not actually complete though the program said it was done.
Marked this thread as "SOLVED".