According to a message to this list from Oli Schacher, http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2011-June/059493.html, all I need to do is copy the deleted emails to their original folder and dovecot will take care of it:
On Tue Jun 7 08:43:54 EEST 2011 Oli Schacher wrote:
OK, but if I want to restore a particular mail from backups, what're the steps involved? What I mean is do I just copy and paste that mail file from backups to the user account maildir folder and what program should I run to synchronize it.
exactly, just copy the mail from your backup back into the users maildir (usually into 'cur'). Make sure the permissions of the restored file are correct. No need to synchronize anything, dovecot automatically detects the added message.
Unless someone out there advises me against doing this, I'm going to try it.
I've also seen dovadm import as a possible suggestion, though if a simple copy works I don't
see why anyone would use dovadm import.
--Mark
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Foley mfoley@ohprs.org Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 17:13:50 -0500 To: dovecot@dovecot.org Subject: How to Restore emails
I have a user who accidentially deleted a large number of emails prior to a certain date. He wants them back. I do have a tarfile backup of these messages. Is there a good way to restore them? Can I simply restore them to the appropriate Maildir directory and dovecot will just "figure it out"?
Thanks, --Mark