Hello,

This is my first post. I run Ubuntu 8.10. I use Evolution as my mail client. I had no problems until yesterday.

After a full working day, Evolution started acting weirdly. I tried to move some messages from inbox to a folder but it was taking unusually long. Then all my folders started showing 184 unread messages. When I clicked on a folder, offcourse there where no unread messages but the folder name remained bold with the number 184 in parenthesis. The "mark all messages as read" did not help. I quitted and started Evolution again. It was the same situation with the addition that now I had some new error messages. The list is bellow:

1. Failed to fetch mail
column folder_name is not unique

2.Error while generating message list
column folder_name is not unique

3. Error while storing folder "Inbox"
column folder_name is not unique

There is no downloading of new mails from the server and if I click on any folder and then back to Inbox I get again error 2 from above and I cannot see the messages in inbox.

I googled for these errors but got nothing relevant. I found several articles for the first line of the errors but all had different second line.

I also run evolution in debug mode and got the following result:

** (evolution:6684): DEBUG: mailto URL command: evolution %s
** (evolution:6684): DEBUG: mailto URL program: evolution
evolution-mail-Message: Error occurred while existing dialogue active:
column folder_name is not unique
evolution-mail-Message: Error occurred while existing dialogue active:
column folder_name is not unique

(evolution:6684): camel-local-provider-WARNING **: Could not save summary for local providers

(evolution:6684): camel-local-provider-WARNING **: Could not save summary for local providers
evolution-mail-Message: Error occurred while existing dialogue active:
column folder_name is not unique
evolution-mail-Message: Error occurred while existing dialogue active:
column folder_name is not unique

(evolution:6684): camel-local-provider-WARNING **: Could not save summary for local providers
Making error

Can anybody help me?

Thank you

I come back with a workaround. After surfing for a solution without success, I did the following:

1. Imported my evolution mail files to Kmail. It has an import wizard that can do it automatically.
2. Created mailbox folders in Kmail and copied each one of my folders into the mailbox folders (this procedure is described in Thunderbird wiki).
3. Copied the mailbox folders to Thunderbird profile directory under local mail (again as per above wiki).
4. Opened Thunderbird and checked the messages in the folders, then closed Thunderbird
5. Imported each folder into evolution running on a different PC from the original evolution (the one which presented the problem).

All these steps were completed with the various mail software working off-line.
I now had a working evolution that would download new mail and allow me to go into inbox from another folder.
Unfortunately not all is perfect. While importing the folders from thunderbird to evolution a number of empty messages were created equal to the number of messages originally in the folder. It was easy to delete these messages, but then I noticed that folder trash was not emptied on quiting evolution. In fact I can not delete the contents of trash any more and it just piles up.

I will look further into it. If, in the mean time, anybody has any idea to offer I would appreciate it.
Thank you

I use Ubuntu 9.04 and have been using evolution for quite a while, I have 5 email accounts that i regularly check with evolution and basically I created inside my inbox a folder for each email where new mails are redirected by filters created by myself.

Without warning I started having the same problems you described in your first email, I solved the problem in a very simple way: I renamed the folder where my email where being stored where I had the "same column_name" problem.

The problem immediately disappeared.
I know its not much of a technical advice but it really did work 100% for me.

Renato