[Users] Recovering messages from somewhere in ~/.claws-mail.

[Ivan Krylov]

Hello Rolf,

On Mon, 20 Dec 2021 14:50:51 +1300
Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

> I'm hoping that the lost message might exist somewhere in the
> tree structure of .../BACKUP/.../.claws-mail, and that I might thereby
> be able to recover it.

I think I remember reading that you use IMAP back in August 2020 when
you were setting this up. If that's [still] the case, your messages
should be under .claws-mail somewhere along the lines of:
/imapcache/IMAPSERVER/r.turner at auckland.ac.nz/FOLDER/...

Where IMAPSERVER is the host name of the mail server you download your
mail from (yours is most likely outlook.office365.com) and the
FOLDER/... part corresponds to the mail folders inside your mail
account.

The folder contains each message in a separate integer-numbered text
file. One way forward is to search for your message using grep or other
tools you're comfortable with. Another thing that could help would be:

1. copy the r.turner at auckland.ac.nz directory from your backup to your
   home directory (this is potentially costly in terms of disk space)
2. click File -> Add mailbox -> MH format (approximate translations
   here, but each of those should be the first entry in the respective
   menu)
3. type r.turner at auckland.ac.nz (which would correspond to the
   ~/r.turner at auckland.ac.nz folder)
4. search the newly added mailbox using the tools offered by Claws
5. once you find the message, you can safely copy it to the mail
   mailbox and "remove" (unregister without removing the files) the
   mailbox from Claws by right-clicking it

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan