Where are local mails?

Ingo Klöcker kloecker at kde.org
Tue Mar 11 13:21:02 GMT 2025


On Dienstag, 11. März 2025 12:16:30 Mitteleuropäische Normalzeit Vojtěch 
Zeisek wrote:
> Dne úterý 11. března 2025 12:04:23, středoevropský standardní čas, Ingo
> Klöcker napsal(a):
> > On Dienstag, 11. März 2025 10:47:01 Mitteleuropäische Normalzeit
> > Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > I'm bit confused. I set up IMAP folder in KMail, and from there I moved
> > > some mails to folder within local folders. That resource claims the
> > > mails
> > > are in /home/vojta/.local/share/local-mail/
> > > KMail as well as Akonadi Console claim there are 31 MB, but when I
> > > navigate
> > > to that folder, it just contain empty directories (default structure of
> > > Maildir), but in fact it's empty. So, where are the mails? Just in the
> > > Akonadi database? How do I enforce to save them into that Maildir? I
> > > wish
> > > to have them physically on disk, not just in the database.
> > 
> > It takes some time until the files/messages appear in the file system
> > after
> > a move. The move seemingly happens very fast, but that's just the update
> > of the location in the database. The files are written to the file system
> > when a sync happens. I haven't moved larger amounts of mails to a local
> > folder so that's just what I remember. If the messages still don't appear
> > after some time then there may be a new bug.
> 
> Thank You and sorry, ma bad. I use openSUSE Tumbleweed, so typically newest
> stable versions, here KMail 6.3.2 (24.12.2), Kf 6.11.0, Qt 6.8.2.

Okay. That's the same version that I use. I have last "moved" a few thousand 
messages from an IMAP folder to a local folder in November last year. It's 
very likely that I copied the messages to the local folder and then deleted 
them from the IMAP folder, i.e. I didn't move them directly. All of those 
messages are in the new/ subfolder on disk.

I have just moved (via drag&drop; this time I really moved them instead of 
doing copy+delete) a few messages from an IMAP folder to a local folder. All 
messages are available on disk.

I suppose that you have enabled displaying of "hidden files"? KMail uses 
"hidden subdirectories" for subfolders of local mail.

> I moved the mails a least 10 days ago.

It shouldn't take that long. At most a few minutes, but usually just a few 
seconds.

> I can access them, fine, I just wonder where they are. :-)

You could try the following:
1.) Copy (!) a few of those messages to an IMAP folder. Verify with another 
email client (or, if possible, via the webmail interface) that the messages 
arrived in the IMAP folder.
2.) Copy (!) the messages from the IMAP folder to another local folder. Check 
if the messages appear on disk.

Regards,
Ingo
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 228 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kdepim-users/attachments/20250311/37846bba/attachment.sig>


More information about the kdepim-users mailing list