Copying Evolution settings and data from one user to another - how?

[NoOp]

On 05/10/2010 01:19 PM, Chris G wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 11:58:51AM -0700, Li Li wrote:
>>    On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 10:34 AM, Chris G <[1]cl at isbd.net> wrote:
>> 
>>      I want to copy Evolution contacts, calendars, tasks and memos from one
>>      user to another and can find no remotely sensible way of doing it.
>> 
>>      I tried copying the whole .evolution hierarchy but that seemed to do
>>      nothing at all - I suspect possibly because of Evolution background
>>      processes hanging on to things.
>> 
>>      Copying addressbook.db apparently doesn't work according to what I can
>>      surmise from a bit of googling.
>> 
>>      Is there really no way to do this?
>> 
>>    Start here:
>> 
>>    [2]http://live.gnome.org/Evolution/FAQ#How_can_I_transfer_all_my_Evolution_data_from_an_old_home_directory_to_a_new_home_directory.3F
>> 
> But that's *not* what I want to do.  One can do it more simply anyway
> by simply backing up Evolution in one place and restoring in the other.
> 
> What I want to do is exactly what I said, copy contacts, calendars,
> tasks and memos and *not* E-Mails.  Copying any one of contacts,
> calendars, tasks and memos would be useful in fact.

Chris, I tested this on a working evolution (with mail) to a test machine:

1. Used Evolution File|Backup Settings
2. Opened the evolution-backup.tar.gz in the archive manager & deleted
both the Mail and Cache folders & saved.
3. On the test machine that previously had no Evolution mail set up, I
used that evolution-backup.tar.gz for restoring (setting up) Evolution.

The email address and pop settings from the original machine are still
there - of course the emails are not.
- You can then use Edit|Preferences|Mail Accounts to modify/delete the
account settings. Evolution requries an email setting, but this can be a
non-existant 'dummy' account.
- If you're inclined, you can edit the evolution-backup.tar.gz
'backup-restore-gconf.xml file to replace the original account with a
'dummy' by doing a global replace in the '<account name="'
sections. That's a bit more tricky, but it does work. If you have
'user at xyzisp.com' do a global replace with 'dummy at noaccount' etc.

Bit of a kludge, but all of the contacts, tasks, calendars, etc., are
preserved in the process & it may take less time that exporting/saving
your contacts to vcard & calendars to .ics and then importing back in.