Greetings.

I made a mistake and deleted my kmail (~.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail) yesterday

Now, I lost many mails. I managed to recover most of it, but the inbox folder is empty. I can find nothing in the inbox in the trash. Is there a way to recover the mails?

Thank you.


openSUSE 11.1
KDE 4.2.4
KMail 1.11.4

I'm still using KDE3

But try this:

Close kmail

Navigate to ~.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail

Make sure you can see the "hidden" files that begin with a "dot" or "period".
["View ... Show Hidden files" usually]

Delete all the .MailDirName.Index.* files

Restart kmail

It will be slow to open as the indexes are rebuilt. May take 10's of minutes if you have 1000's of emails.

Any better?

And Welcome to LQ!

Thank you for the reply tredegar.

I did not describe the problem well. After I deleted the folder, T did a reboot. KDE settings reverted to the originals. I managed (after some search) to restore most of the settings (plus custom folders) by copying files from the Trash. The folder in trash:/0-.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail does not have any hidden files. The inbox folder (trash:/0-.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail/inbox) is empty as well. So while I can find the folders you describe in my ~/.kde4/share/apps/kmail/mail, I cannot find the hidden files in the Trash.

Is there a command line way of seeing hidden files in the Trash?


EDIT: I forgot to mention that Kmail was used as part of Kontact 1.4.4


Regards,

Kapten Beard

Ok, I understand better now.

I am not using KDE4, and not sure where it keeps "Trash" but it might be
/home/kapten/.local/share/Trash

so you could try
To see the hidden files in Trash

Kmail may be very different in KDE4.

In my /home/tred/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/inbox directory I have three further directories cur tmp and new

Read mail is kept in the new directory and mail messages have names like
1234567890.6633.apJ6H:2,S

Please don't do any more reboots until you are sure your email is not recoverable (although it might be too late, now that you have already rebooted).

Perhaps it would be wise to copy all of trash to somewhere "safer" like /home/kapten/LostStuff before some "tidying up" process comes along and empties your "trash". Then you can reboot as much as you like.

No, I cannot find my mails. Look like O learned a lesson the hard way now. :|

Ah well, I'll be more careful from now on.


Thank you for the replies friend.