Evolution will not delete certain folders, claiming they are not empty, even though they appear to be empty

[Chris Wagner]

This problem exists in Edgy/6.10.

I have several folders that exist under my Inbox of "On This Computer". They've been there for some time, and I've just recently emptied all of the mail out of them. Now, for whatever reason, several of them are not deletable - at least not through evolution; some deleted fine. I get a message like
  Cannot delete folder "Inbox/school".
  Because "Could not delete folder `Inbox/school':
  Directory not empty".
Unlike this message indicates, the folder is empty as far as I can tell.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for looking for the upstream corresponding bug. There is no real need to open a distribution bug for something already known upstream, you might want to do that for bugs that you think should be fixed for the next version of Ubuntu not for any bug

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

(Sorry - didn't realize there was an upstream report at the time of filing.)

[bwallum (rbw2)]

I'm running 7.10 and get the same problem now. I get multiple folders generated.

E.g,

For my normal Inbox folder I also get these folders:-
inbox.before_restore_2008-01-07_10.43.28.649732
.
inbox.cmeta.before_restore_2008-01-07_10.43.28.649732
.
inbox.ev-summary.before_restore_2008-01-07_10.43.28.649732
.
inbox.ibex.index.before_restore_2008-01-07_10.43.28.649732

and lots of them too!

I can delete the 'inbox.before_restore_' folders.
I can't delete the 'cmeta', 'ev-summary', and 'ibex.index' folders.

I have been using Simple Backup and Simple Restore which appear to work normally for all my '/home/' files.

I'm running on AMD64 hardware and Ubuntu AMD64 desktop, set up by clean install and then restoring '/home/' from second hardrive using Simple Restore.

I have tried deleting evolution directories in various orders but no change in effect. I have completely removed and reinstalled evolution to no effect. I have tried restoring the .evolution file on its own to no effect.

Regards
Bob

[Jon Loveless (papajon)]

I have the same issue. I use Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 and Simple Backup/Restore. After a restore, I ended up with about a dozen folders - mostly inboxes, labeled as bove - Inbox before restore, after Restore, etc. I emptied and even renamed the folders (xx0-xx11) but I can't delete them. The message says they are not empty, but the are.

Jon

[Jon Loveless (papajon)]

Here is a workaround to get rid of the unwanted folders in Evolution. Use care.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have mail folders in Evolution that you want to delete yo can do so bt following these steps.

Note: If you don't have Krusader installed you can do so but you can also use something like Thunar. Either way you need to enable "Show Hidden Files" from the View drop down)

Step 1: in Evolution, create a new unique folder: right-click on "On this computer" and then "New Folder". Give it a certain unique name, such as "2delete".
Step 2: move all of the email folders that you want to delete to this new folder. I renamed them aLL first, to XX00 to XX12 (I had 13 of them)
Step 3: close Evolution
Step 4: Open Krusader or Thunar (actually, any File Manager should be able to get to these files as long as it can "Show Hidden files".
Step 5: Navigate to /Home/[your_user_name]/.evolution/mail/local. Be sure to include the "." before evolution - this is a hidden folder and won't display unless you have enabled "Show Hidden Files"
Step 6: locate all of the files with your unique folder name and delete them. The folders you moved are found in the directory with the unique name you gave and an extension of ".sbd". You can jut delete that directory and all of the related ones with the same file name. No need to open the one with .sbd and delete those files inside. Be careful here because when you delete these files they are not moved to Trash so are gone for good. That is why the Unique_Folder_Name is so important.
Step 7: Open Evolution again. You will get a message that it can't locate your [unique_folder_name]. You won't get this message again.

Your undesired directories/mailboxes are now gone.

[Chris Wagner (chris-wagner)]

I've determined the cause for the error message described in this bug report. See the upstream bug report for detail: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350913

[bwallum (rbw2)]

I now have no issue using Evolution in Karmic and Jaunty.

[Dr Malcolm Bradley (malcolm-bradley)]

bwallum wrote:
> I now have no issue using Evolution in Karmic and Jaunty.
>
>
There appears to be a misunderstanding about these bugs. My problem was
quite simply not being able to empty the deleted items folder.

I have stopped using Evolution and moved instead to Thunderbird because
of the lack of confidence in Evolution. I am really uncomfortable having
mail items in the deleted items folder that I cannot permanently remove.
I have checked again a few seconds ago and the message is the same as
when originally reported:

'Error while Expunging folder.'

There are 102 items in the deleted items folder.

regards

Dr Malcolm Bradley

[Dr Malcolm Bradley (malcolm-bradley)]

There appears to be a misunderstanding about these bugs. My problem was
quite simply not being able to empty the deleted items folder.

I have stopped using Evolution and moved instead to Thunderbird because
of the lack of confidence in Evolution. I am really uncomfortable having
mail items in the deleted items folder that I cannot permanently remove.
I have checked again a few seconds ago and the message is the same as
when originally reported:

'Error while Expunging folder.'

There are 102 items in the deleted items folder.

regards

Dr Malcolm Bradley

[bwallum (rbw2)]

This bug does not exist in Lucid 4th May 2010

[Trond-trondhuso (trond-trondhuso)]

Just want to inform that this bug exists in Lucid April 24, 2012.

[Jörg Frings-Fürst (jff-de)]

change to invalid (see gnome-bug)