Re: [Evolution] Evolution 3.26.2-1 - Cannot Back up or Export Local Data or Mail

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Sun, 2017-11-26 at 10:44 -0700, gibster wrote:
> Would very much appreciate any advice anyone is able to provide.

        Hello,
that's intentional behaviour of the backup tool in evolution. The EWS
accounts are not local by its nature, they are like IMAP, everything is
stored on the server, thus they save its data into ~/.cache/, not into
~/.local/. The cache can be removed, which will cause it to be
repopulated the next time evolution is started. I understand that your
22GB mailbox is not suitable for such things, but such situations
(empty cache folder) is not done often, at least not to me, unless I
delete the content on my own.

Where did you configure the EWS account? Was it directly in evolution,
or in GNOME Online Accounts? The cache directories (and also those in
local) are paired with their sources/accounts based on a UID. Accounts
created in Evolution keep their UIDs in the backup, and are the same
after restore. Accounts created in GNOME Online Accounts do not, these
are not part of the backup (because the account definition belongs to
GNOME Online Accounts, not to Evolution), and each machine may have
assigned different UID for such accounts, thus a simple copy of the
cache folder doesn't work.

If you want to have some kind of archive for your EWS messages, both
stored locally and on the server (which feels kind of odd to me, as I'd
trust more to the server, than to my local machine), then you may want
to do it with some filters and copy the remote messages to the On This
Computer folder(s), in which case they'll be part of the backup as
well.

There can be more options, without copying messages to the local
folder, but they are more complicated (like you'd create the backup
yourself, including folders you want to have there, together with GNOME
Online Accounts settings, but I do not know how properly restore those
accounts). You can also run evolution from a terminal and see what it
does on backup, and eventually on restore, then mimic it in your manual
backup/restore.
        Bye,
        Milan