After I mortally wounded my mint 13 with KDE by changing the graphics card driver, I attempted to recover by tarring my home directory, including all hidden files, to a backup drive, reinstalling Mint, installing all the updates, installing the additional programs that I had stored before, then simply extracting the soved home directory into the new home directory.

This worked for various applications. Firefox has its bookmarks. GnuCash opens to the same file it was using before the registration......etc. The desktop, however did not "restore" itself. The programs that I had added to the panel are not there. The addressbook has all of my contacts, but only sent mail had any of my mail. Inbox, local folders, etc are empty.

My regular data folders, in my home directory, all seem to be intact.

Any suggestions as to how to restore the missing mail?

Richard.