My gmail account is way, way too big. I’ve tried using the gmail archive. My final backup solution was to use isync (mbsync -a) which (over many days) creates a nice, fully usable file structure on my local disk in Maildir ++ format. I thought that was the hard part, but NO… it turns out there is no good way to read those files other than something like neomutt which can’t read html or other visual messages. This should be something that evolution can do–not just with ease, but with style. So why can’t I find any method to get evolution to display my local email files created by mbsync -a ?
Likely because you have not followed Maildir Format Mail Directories account settings
Yes, It would be nice, if evolution could display the e.g. “.mbox.gz” files in readonly mode that you now can access via mutt (one .mbox.gz corresponds to an evolution folder with a lot of objects).
If you wish to carry all the GB of mail archive with your smartphone, there is only mutt to read/search/display the archived items as evolution does not run on a smartphone.
On Linux you have to import the .mbox files (e.g. from gmail/mbsync) into your local store (e.g. On this computer) and can read it as maildir files. But I agree, a direct view into a .mbox.gz archive would be nice to have.
Hi,
it’s true, the gz-ipped files cannot be currently read, but the plain
mbox files can be opened since:
which landed for the 3.54.0 stable version.
To add the gzip decoder into the pipe, that would need a new bug
report. I agree the simple compression makes sense for the archives.
I’m only not sure how easy it would be to get the file MIME type
properly (that it’s a compressed MBOX file), but it’s not necessarily a
problem either. I’d not add more compression methods though, that feels
out of the Evolution intention.
Bye,
Milan
Thank you Milan for that information!
That is really an easy way to browse through the archive. It works with the flatpak version too:
alias evo=‘flatpak run org.gnome.Evolution’
evo --view archive.mbox
If you view the attachments, they are stored in the folder $HOME/.var/app/org.gnome.Evolution/cache/evolution/tmp.
Thank you andre, for your reply. I thought I was doing what was described in the Maildir Format account settings, but alas I had no joy. You’re confidence in the information caused me to pull some of my remaining hair out before I decided to read up on the actual MailDir++ format. My mistake was in setting mbsync to follow “Subfolders Verbatim” rather than “Subfolders Maildir++” on the gmail account. I had thought the verbatim output was correct for achieving a Maildir++ formatted set of folders. It appears correct but for one key element; there must be a ‘.’ preceding each folder name. Correcting for that manually and setting mbsync to Maildir++ rather than Verbatim going forward allows evolution to parse the archive and display my backups as desired. This allows me, for anyone following this conversation, to setup evolution to only read my local mail files, leaving me free to keep a very lean gmail account, free of older email while maintaining a complete historical backup of all my email over many years. I love evolution as a mail reader, but gmail is pervasive. This yields best of both for me.
This topic was automatically closed 45 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.