Bug 77744

Made JJ, rewrote summarry. This could go in the Tools menu, and could run ark on the local mail folder (~/Mail, by default). There are obvious problems with IMAP &c, though.

what is JJ ?
I think in kmail, File|Save as should check whether there are more than one e-Mails selected and then save them as ordinary files. I really like kmail for reading just plain file-saved e-Mails.

I would like to try if you write me you are still interested.

"JJ" is shortcut for junior job to ease finding tasks for new developers.

for what it's worth, when I finished school I wanted to save all of my emails on my IMAP school account before they cut me off.  I selected them all and moved them to a new folder. I don't recall how carefully I checked, but I think that gave me a big old plaintext file just like my POP3 inbox (It's now on a backup disk I will probably never look at again.)  

Anyway, It seems like something similar could be done transparently with such an archive system.  And it would be nice if that were done with a couple of simple mouse clicks.  

Wow. These are all very similar, yet not similar enough to be dupes (IMHO): bug 55827, bug 77744, bug 85656, bug 34382 and bug 76690.

*** Bug 88407 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

I think I will add an entry "backup this folder" in the RMB menu on the folder tree.
What do you think?

this option is *really* needed I tried to backup my Mail directory (using kde 3.4 now) then I formatted.. when I got back and restored that.. I didn't have ANY! of my emails. so now I'm completely F*#& as VERY important information was stored there.
I read later that in 3.4 emails are not stored in that directory anymore.. had this option been in place this mistake wouldn't have been made.

Stephen: for your case, just restore the emails onto ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/kmail.

You didn't lose anything.

afraid I did.. kmail in 3.4 moved all my emails to that directory.. I backed up ~/Mail which contained a bunch of empty directories. :/

I just burn weekly the whole "home" directory to an other disk. I hope, the next linux generations of suse/red hut/debian/knoppix/... will be able to open and use that saved directory. Who has experience in using such method? Thanks to all.

Just today I lost numerous emails because of a bug in Kolab. Actually there is no way to backup the Kolab IMAP. If at least we had a tool that saves all the emails through the frontend, if the backend way does not work yet... 

This is really highly needed!!!!!

Is anybody about to implement this? Just a question... :-) 

I think this ticket is a duplicate of 
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34382
In this case, please reassign your votes :-)

This is very similar to somthing I was working on a while ago, I'll see if I can dig it up and get it finished. Not promising anything though!

Is this to back up all mails stored locally by KMail?  If so, shouldn't a simple script or something to tar up the directory be enough?  Will mails always be stored under ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/kmail, or is this something configurable...

I just needed to backup my mail and I spent preety lot time to figure out how can I do it. Because I have some other work to do, it would be very usefull to add option to:
- backup all mail (inbox, send, draft and other inbox folders which user created) and
- with all configuration needed (unreaded, readed, flaged important, replied, forwarded...) and
- to backup all identities and accounts.

I think this is very important option, because we users have a lot information (also important) stored in mail.

Average user don't know where mail is stored, how is stored (what is mbox and other), where are stored configurations (are configurations stored seperately? - what are configurations of mail?...), and so on. User wants to use mail application with ease... with clicks - so he/she can spend time more efficiently.

I hope the creators of this great mail application, would understand the need and at same time wish for this option.

I would thanks to authors of Kmail for their job they're done so far (their job is great because a lot of good words are heard for Kmail) and wish them satisfaction of hearing much more good words for their work from users.

I think, we should have a backup framework in KDE. 

an application ( like kmail) knows best about it's settings and it's data. There should be an easy way, to feed this info into a backup job with the backup application. 

Created attachment 19516 [details]
Patch which adds mail export functionality (old)

Created attachment 19517 [details]
Patch which adds Mail Export functionality

Vladimir, thanks for your patch. However, I don't think it's a good idea to hardcode the destination to the user's desktop. For me it won't work for example, since I don't have icons on my desktop. A dialog asking for a path would be a better solution.

Created attachment 19985 [details]
mail export patch v3

Now with KFileDialog to let the user selection a location, and success/error
dialog boxes.

Would it be possible to provide a full-backup solution, that saves and compresses all mails every 3 days? Perhaps with support for incremental backups and GPG-encryption?

Similar bugs: 
bug 34382
bug 55827
bug 76690
bug 77744
bug 85656
bug 89100

According to some people, these bug reports differ slightly in details, so I won't mark them as duplicates now.

Apperently, this patch is used in the kmailversion of kubuntu. 

I get reports from kubuntu people exporting their maildirectory with kmail, but being unable to import it back.

So if the patch is accepted into kmail, it should at least also make sure the kmail import filters can handle the exported compressed file.

The Spirit Of The Bug.

There seem to be one thing that is taking people apart in the various similar entries around this issue: Shall we have a point'n'click RMB-like option (or Xport Script) or should the kdepim devs once-for-all decide to make the handling of the full core of needed files a trivial task ?

The first option is the "Blind" one: Click a button (hit enter in your CLI), and hope for the best. If your reason to seek restoration is an unwise fiddle with some config files, you are probably dead.

The second one looks more "transparent" to me; in bug 135029 I am vouching to a "portable" holdall document folder that would make life of all easier: the backup freak (copy a single folder all over the place), the config tweaker (knows where to look for), the business-on-the-move white collar (can roam the world with his stuff on a stick)... And that architecture doesn't, on the opposite, prevent hardcore *nixers from cron-job'ing it, scripting tar.gz's of it, whatever the above conversations reflects & their technical abilities are.

&& we'll _all_ be smiling from one ear to the other,
...or so I think.

Jean-Philippe
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135029

We've now added an archive function for folders for KDE 4.4.
You can select any folder (also IMAP ones) and archive it, including the subfolders. The mails are stored in an archive file, either .tar.* or .zip.
The import tool has been extended to support importing of such archives.

I'm leaving this bug open since it is slightly different from what you want here.

Help on improving the function and make it more fitting to your needs would be welcome.

Am Mittwoch 25 November 2009 20:32:31 schrieb Thomas McGuire:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77744
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- Comment #28 from Thomas McGuire <mcguire kde org>  2009-11-25 20:32:24
>  --- We've now added an archive function for folders for KDE 4.4.
> You can select any folder (also IMAP ones) and archive it, including the
> subfolders. The mails are stored in an archive file, either .tar.* or .zip.
> The import tool has been extended to support importing of such archives.
> 
> I'm leaving this bug open since it is slightly different from what you want
> here.
> 
> Help on improving the function and make it more fitting to your needs would
>  be welcome.
> 
Thanks a lot, Thomas!
I  am an editor at the linux magazine by now, and I will write an article on Kontact around 
Christmas, I surely will talk about that tool, too.
Great.

*** Bug 128170 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 154034 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 184133 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Not sure why the archive option does not fulfill this bug report which is labeled "add tool to archive all mail".
You can move all the mails you want to archive to a specific folder then archive this folder or archive your existing folders.

Moving this wish to kmail2 product, please amend the report telling exactly what needs to be added apart from archiving as it is in KMail2.

As far as I can tell, Laurent has added all the features needed.
If not, there are probably other wishes for the missing parts.
resolving