[Dovecot] Conversion from Evolution maildir to imap

[Timo Sirainen]

On 28.3.2013, at 10.51, Paul van der Vlis <paul at vandervlis.nl> wrote:

> A customer has a thin-client server with 100+ homedirs with Evolution.
> They are using POP3 and maildir.  Now I want to switch to IMAP.
> 
> Can I use Dovecot on this maildirs, or does Evolution use another kind
> of maildir?

I'm guessing it uses Dovecot's :LAYOUT=fs directory structure.

> Does Dovecot change anything in the maildirs?
> 
> Do I loose my flags this way, like "read" ?

I'm not sure, depends on if Evolution stored the flags to maildir filenames. I'm guessing it doesn't, so you'd lose flags.

> Normally I am using Cyrus IMAP. What I want to do is to install Dovecot
> to have access to the mail over IMAP because Dovecot can do maildir
> (Cyrus cannot). Then I can use imapsync to sync everything to Cyrus.
> Do you think that's a good idea?

The best way in any case would be to simply configure the new IMAP account to Evolution and copy the messages there using Evolution itself.