I am looking for a way to import my contacts from the 1.4.6 version files to the new 2.0.2 install. I can't seem to just drop the files in and have the new version pick them up. I tried creating a new addressbook and then overwriting that file and it didn't work either. My contacts were stored in several different files.

So how do I get my contacts from the old files to the new evolution? I will do just about whatever it takes since I can't access any of my contacts right now...

FYI - their manual was not resourceful.

have you tried file -> import?

i have also seen that in previous versions contacts would not be as seamlessly imported during upgrades as might be expected. the work-arounds at the time were to 1) copy contact data 2) close/kill evolution (by using 'killev' or 'evolution --force-shutdown') 3) restart evolution...

Yeah I tried the import feature, and it worked great for my emai files, but won't import the addressbook. Seems to be a lacking feature that it will import mail but not its own addressbook format. It gives me an error about not being able to import that file type.

^^bump^^

I just migrated my Evolution 1.4 contacts into Evolution 2.0. Try this:

1. Close Evolution.
2. Copy the addressbook.db file from local/Contacts in your evolution (1.4) folder to your addressbook/local/system folder.
3. Restart your computer.

You have to restart, because Evolution doesn't seem to recognize the new file until after you restart.

Hopefully that will work for you...

that is documented above -- it deals with evolution requiring a forcefull kill of all processes....

This has been common to evolution upgrades, though not an evolution user, i can't expand much on that...

Thanks for the info. I will keep that in mind. I ended up just reinstalling 1.4 and then installed 2.0. When I installed 2.0 it automatically imported all my old stuff.

OK Now I rebuilt my system with a fresh install on a new computer. I have the entire .evolution directory from my previous install of 2.0. O copied this folder into my home folder on the new machine. When I started evolution the email came up automatically but it doesn't see any of the addressbooks. I had several. They are all sitting there. I have tried restarting my computer since I copied them there.

What now? How do I get it to see the files?

OK I finally got it figured out! I did some searching on the Novell site and saw a post from someone else asking a similar question. Your address book settings in version 2.x are stored in ~/.gconf/apps/evolution
You have to copy these settings to get your addressbooks recognized after you copy the actual files. Otherwise you will have to manually edit the config file to recognize all of your addressbooks on the new install.

Evolution had a veeery hard crash, and the only way my local guru found to fix the problem was to create a new user account for me. Now all of my hundreds of contacts are gone. I know the location of the file (addressbook.db) which has them all, but I'm baffled by exactly what steps to take to get them where they need to be. I saw earlier messages about copying the settings, but those message weren't clear enough to help me. I anyone has time, please send details: file locations, names, where to put them, etc. Thanks in advance - I'm desperate

the best way to import the old data is to copy your ~/evolution folder to your new home directory BEFORE you start evolution for the first time. on startup, evolution recognizes the folder and asks if you wish to import the your mails, contacts etc.
after that evolution tells you that you can delete the old folder because all the data is stored in evolution's new directory.

I tried that, but it didn't import my contacts. It did import the email files though. The only way I see to manually import your contacts is to edit this file - /home/<yourusername>/.gconf/apps/evolution/addressbook/display/%gconf.xml

Or maybe copy your old one over top of the old one if you still have it. I'm getting ready to experiment with it and I'll try to post back.

I just copied this whole folder back over the new one from a backup of my user directory I had:
/home/<yourusername>/.gconf/apps/evolution/addressbook

All my contacts are now back!

You still have to copy over your old:
/home/<yourusername>/.evolution folder. That's what contains the actual files that contain your email and contacts.

These instructions are also for evolution version 2.x. If you are running version 1.4 then you can just copy over the data folder:
/home/<yourusername>/evolution and everything will be back.

You might have to do a reboot for the changes to take effect.

Hi,
great. It gave me my contacts back. Only one issue:
You should copy all files from local/Contacts to the new addressbook/local/system, because otherwise Evolution will not be able to complete email-addresses that are in your adressbook.

Gelonida

Great to see derddera's post below to import EVERYTHING from old Evolution.

I already had started Evolution installed tried several things so I couldn't do the BEFORE option.

To kind of simulate that I Trashed .evolution, .gconf (I'm guessing you could probably just remove the Evolution subfulder), .gconfd and rebooted the computer. I started Evolution and sure enough it imported everything.

Now this is great!