[Users] Storage of emails and transfer from an old config directory to new

[James Morris]

Hi,

Warning: horrible tangled mess here.


I access my email a/c using IMAP, but in a somewhat dim-witted fashion,
have configured Claws with filters to remove all the emails from the
server into an MH account. Been doing this for quite some time w/o
realising I could have just used POP3 instead.

At some point in the past I accidentally delete my home directory and
then recovered (the bulk of) it using ext3delete (which I'll refer to as
$OLD_HOME). I made a new $HOME for my user and plopped the recovered
$OLD_HOME into it within a subfolder.

So the problem is I have an old config directory $OLD_HOME/.claws-mail/
in which I presume are stored all my old emails, which I cannot access.

I also have $HOME/.claws-mail in which presumably are stored all my
new emails.

I have tried using the --alternate-config option to view the old
emails but Claws complains $OLD_HOME/.claws-mail/clawsrc is missing.

But then I also found $SOME_OTHER_HOME/.claws-mail which did have a
clawsrc file, so with Claws fired up there could be seen all the old
folders I moved my emails into, along with counts of the emails
believed to be there within.

However warnings were issued about a missing files named
$HOME/Mail/$FOLDER/stat. I don't think this $HOME/Mail folder existed
previously - but $SOME_OTHER_HOME/Mail does exist but no files name
stat within it.

It also requested the a/c password but I declined to give it because
I didn't want any of the processing rules in the old config to remove
any new emails from the server.

I want to copy the emails but don't understand the conventions used
when storing them, if I could copy them from the old config to the new,
or even if what I'm looking at (the files with numeric names) are even
the emails themselves.

Any helpful pointers appreciated.

regards
James.