Table of Contents

How to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird/Icedove

1.1. Backup
1.2. Export data that can’t be imported straight away
1.3. Disable completely Evolution
2.1. On debian
2.2. On Lucid
3.1. Filtaquilla
4.1. Mails
4.2. Mail status
4.3. Contacts
4.4. Calendars
4.5. Tasks
4.6. Birthday calendar
4.7. Create your mail accounts
4.8. Filters
5.1. Get calendar events in the gnome-clock applet
5.2. Integration in Ubuntu

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How to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird/Icedove

Here is a step by step procedure with script to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird/Icedove. This will keep ALL datas (mail, calendar entries, tasks, contacts) as well as keeping mail status (important, read, replied, etc.) thanks to a script that I developed. This procedure has been done for Debian Sid but has command for Ubuntu Lucid as well. It was tested with Thunderbird/Icedove 3.1 and Evolution 2.28 to 2.32.

Backup Evolution and prepare the migration

1.1. Backup

- Put evolution in offline mode

Backup from the GUI or use :

/usr/lib/evolution/2.32/evolution-backup --backup ~/USERNAME-evolution.tar.gz

If it hangs you can kill it once you saw the following message :

** Message: rm /home/letic/evolution.dir

1.2. Export data that can’t be imported straight away

Export all contacts from Evolution by right clicking on each addressbook ->Save to vcard

1.3. Disable completely Evolution

Logoff from the session (avoid issue with the clock applet)
Log in as the user in a console (Ctrl+Alt+F1) mkdir backup mv ~/.gconf/apps/evolution ~/backup/evolution_gconf # For Evolution >= 2.30 mv ~/.config/evolution/ ~/backup/evolution_config mv ~/.local/share/evolution ~/backup/evolution_data # For Lucid (evolution 2.28 mv ~/.evolution ~/backup/evolution_data

This will make sure that you have no entries left in the calendar and that you won’t retrieve your mail by mistake in Evolution.

Install Thunderbird/Icedove + lightning/iceowl + enigmail

2.1. On debian

Install all required packages aptitude install icedove iceowl-extension
Optional packages :
- enigmail for PGP support
- icedove-l10n-XX and iceowl-l10n-XX where XX stands for your locale

2.2. On Lucid

It is a bit more annoying as the lightning extension is missing.

Install Thunderbird aptitude install thunderbird
Optional packages :
- enigmail for PGP support
- enigmail-locale-XX and thunderbird-locale-XX where XX stands for your locale
Install the lightning extension (no locales available in Ubuntu)
- First you require xul-ext-calendar from natty wget "http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu//pool/universe/l/lightning-extension/xul-ext-calendar-timezones_1.0~b2+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_all.deb" dpkg -i xul-ext-calendar-timezones_1.0~b2+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_all.deb
- Then for 32bits wget "http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu//pool/universe/l/lightning-extension/xul-ext-lightning_1.0~b2+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_i386.deb" dpkg -i xul-ext-lightning_1.0~b2+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_i386.deb
- Or for 64 bits wget "http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu//pool/universe/l/lightning-extension/xul-ext-lightning_1.0~b2+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb" dpkg -i xul-ext-lightning_1.0~b2+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb
  
  It is always better to use the packaged version instead of the xpi from the addons website. Especially as there is no 64bits version of lightning available for download on the official website.

Prepare Thunderbird/Icedove for the migration

Run Thunderbird/Icedove and create a fake imap access manually
Optional : set incoming/outgoing mail to UTF-8 in Edit -> Preferences ->Display ->Advanced

3.1. Filtaquilla

Filtaquilla is an addon that enhanced filters to be able to handle regex expressions and even javascript filters. These steps have to be done before importing the mail or the “x-evolution” header won’t be in the DB.

Go to Edit ->Preferences ->Advanced ->Config editor

and search for the “mailnews.customDBHeaders” preference and set it to “x-evolution”
Get the Filtaquilla plugin from here or run wget "https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/downloads/latest/10052/addon-10052-latest.xpi?src=addondetail" -O "filtaquilla-1.1.0-tb+sm.xpi"
In Tools ->Addons ->Filtaquilla ->Preferences check Javascript
Close Thunderbird/Icedove

Migrating your data

4.1. Mails

Copy mbox files cp -ax ~/backup/evolution_data/mail/local/* ~/.icedove/PROFILE/Mail/Local\ Folders/

Remove all unneeded files cd ~/.icedove/PROFILE/Mail/Local\ Folders/ find . -name "ibex" -delete find . -name "*.cmeta" -delete rm -r folders.db .#evolution.sbd/ Outbox Templates

Optional : Convert your mail files to UTF-8
Be careful as this could do more harm than good !
- First check your mailboxes encoding find . -type f -exec file {} ;
- Convert to UTF-8 (for example if ALL you mailboxes are ISO-8859-15) find . -type f -print0 | while read -d $'\0' FILE; do iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 "$FILE" > "$FILE.utf8"; mv "$FILE" "$FILE.old"; mv "$FILE.utf8" "$FILE"; done

4.2. Mail status

Go to Tools ->Message Filters
Select “Local Folders” and add a new message filter :
- Type : Javascript
- Matches
- Content logger = 'MESSAGE : ' + message.getStringProperty('subject') + '\n'; let evohdr = message.getStringProperty('x-evolution'); logger += 'THUNDERBIRD FLAGS BEFORE : ' + message.flags + '\n'; evostatus = evohdr.substring(evohdr.length - 4, evohdr.length); logger += 'EVOLUTION HEXA : ' + evostatus + '\nSTATUS : \n'; var hexevostatus = parseInt(evostatus, 16); var flags = message.flags; deleted = false; if (hexevostatus & 1<<0) { logger += ' * is answered\n'; flags = flags | 1<<1 } if (hexevostatus & 1<<1) { logger += ' * is deleted\n'; deleted = true; } if (hexevostatus & 1<<3) { logger += ' * is marked as important\n'; flags = flags | 1<<2 } if (hexevostatus & 1<<4) { logger += ' * is read\n'; flags = flags | 1<<0 } if (hexevostatus & 1<<5) { logger += ' * has attachment(s)\n'; flags = flags | 1<<28 } if (hexevostatus & 1<<7) { logger += ' * is junk\n'; message.setStringProperty('junkscore', 100); message.setStringProperty('junkscoreorigin','user'); } if (hexevostatus & 1<<11) { logger += ' * has been marked as not junk (no action)\n'; } if (hexevostatus & 1<<12) { logger += ' * has been forwarded\n'; flags = flags | 1<<12 } message.flags = flags; logger += 'THUNDERBIRD FLAGS SET TO : ' + flags + '\n'; logger +='WILL DELETE ? : ' + deleted; Cc["@mozilla.org/consoleservice;1"] .getService(Ci.nsIConsoleService) .logStringMessage(logger); (deleted)
- Action : Delete
Run the Javascript filter on all your imported folders to recover your mail status. It will perform the following action :

Status in Evolution	Action in Thunderbird/Icedove
Unread emails	Do nothing
Read emails	Mark as read
Answered emails	Mark as replied
Forwarded emails	Mark as transferred
Mark as important	Starred
Has attachments	Same
Marked as SPAM	Manually set the junkscore to 100 and mark for deletion
Deleted	Mark them for deletion

All mails marked for deletion (junk/deleted) will then be deleted as part of the filter action. All these status are cumulative in both program even if Thunderbird/Icedove is the only one that actually display them. It will keep the flags set by Thunderbird/Icedove during the first import (especially “hasRe” status).
Unfortunately there is no way to un a filter on several folders (or all subfolders). This might be possible as an extension but as I had limited time to perform it this wasn’t done. The quickest way is to run through your mailbox with the keyboard and type “Alt+T” then R.
When restarting the program or clicking on another folder and back the folder’s read count will get updated EXCEPT if you selected the threaded display.

4.3. Contacts

Get the More Functions for AddressBook plugin wget http://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/morefunctionsforAB-TB3-0.6.4.1.xpi
Install the addon in Thunderbird/Icedove
Open the addressbook and right click in the blank contact list list (right of the screen) ->“Import vcard/vcf”
Once you selected the script it will take some time to import so please click continue the script for as long as it takes

4.4. Calendars

Open the calendar and go to “Event and Tasks” ->Import.
Your former evolution calendar will be in _{/backup/evolution_data/calendar/[local/]system\ (if\ you\ have\ several\ you\ will\ find\ them\ in}/backup/evolution_data/calendar/[local/]XXXXXXXXXX.XXXX.X@YOURPC)

4.5. Tasks

Same as for the Calendar, open the tasks lists and go to “Event and Tasks” ->Import
The tasks are in _{/backup/evolution_data/tasks/system\ and}/backup/evolution_data/tasks/XXXXXXXXXX.XXXX.X@YOURPC

4.6. Birthday calendar

If you miss the birthday calendar from Evolution install Thunderbirthday

4.7. Create your mail accounts

That’s it you can now create your mail accounts in Thunderbird and get drown by all the mails you have received since closing Evolution.

4.8. Filters

I redid manually my filters because I wanted to clean them up, but a simple XSL to use with xsltproc should be easy to do if you really want to keep your filters. If you need some help to start :

Evolution >= 2.30 filters are in a XML file located in : ~/.config/evolution/mail/filters.xml
Evolution 2.28 filters are in ~/.evolution/mail/filters.xml
Thunderbird/Icedove filters are stored in _{/.icedove/PROFILE/Mail/Local\ Folders/msgFilterRules.dat,\ other\ POP\ accounts\ are\ in\ :}/.icedove/PROFILE/Mail/POPACCOUNT/msgFilterRules.dat and IMAP accounts filters are in : ~/.icedove/PROFILE/ImapMail/IMAPACCOUNT/msgFilterRules.dat
Thunderbird/Icedove filters file has the following structure : version="9" logging= name= enabled= type= action= actionValue= condition= name= enabled= type= action= actionValue= condition= ...

Integrate better in Gnome

5.1. Get calendar events in the gnome-clock applet

Install the evolution-mirror plugin.

5.2. Integration in Ubuntu

Evolution-mirror should already give you a great integration with gnome but if you want a better integration in Ubuntu see this post

References

These are just some links/docs that helped me developing the script, if you wondered where did I found these numbers :

Evolution (Camel) Messages flags
Mozilla doesn’t have a online code browser so I had to pull the source to get their flags. In the nsMsgMessageFlags.h file you will find the following useful flags definition : class NS_NO_VTABLE NS_SCRIPTABLE nsMsgMessageFlags { public:
```
  NS_DECLARE_STATIC_IID_ACCESSOR(NS_MSGMESSAGEFLAGS_IID)

  enum { Read = 1U };

  enum { Replied = 2U };

  enum { Marked = 4U };
  ...
  enum { Forwarded = 4096U };
  ...
  enum { Attachment = 268435456U };
```