I have Kmail (and Kontact) installed on a Linux Mint 17 MATE system, brand new. After spending days researching, I imported my Outlook 2010 .pst file into Thunderbird on the Windows machine, then imported the Thunderbird profile into Kmail. It bothered me that KMail would not let me import into Local Folders, it insisted I import into one of the sub-folders. So I said import into INBOX.

It seemed to work fine, and I have literally hundreds of subdirectories because that's how my wife organizes her life. But they're all buried 7 layers deep under the INBOX, so I wanted to move the directories. No can do.

Then I tried just opening a few dozen random emails--no can do:

"Unable to fetch item from backend (collection 0): Unable to retrieve item from resources: Invalid item retrieved."

I've spent hours researching this, and indeed there are hundreds of posts about the error, but absolutely NO solutions I can find. Folks can't move imported directories, and/or get these cryptic error messages. Some posts are full of technobabble about something called a "akonadi server" or some such. I have no idea what that means or what to do about it. I foolishly thought KMail would just work when I installed it. Silly me....

I hate Thunderbird, but I guess that's where I'm headed unless someone has finally solved this problem that's apparently been known for at least 4 years. Many thanks for any advice!

--Brad

Did you try importing the pst files directly rather than going through Thunderbird, if it is possible?

Another solution would be (I don't use Thunderbird so I have no idea if it is possible) to convert the "pst" format to "Maildir" format (and not the "mbox" one Thunderbird uses by default) then add a new local folders account (Configure KMail > Accounts) pointing to the folder that contains the converted pst-to-maildir data. This would mean a much cleaner solution.

Also, which version of KDE PIM are you using? You can find it in the help menu -> About KMail.

There is no option to import .pst files directly, that's why I went through Thunderbird as was suggested on several posts.

I am running KMail 4.13.2 which I just downloaded and installed a couple of days ago, presumably the latest version.

I suppose I could try converting the .pst file to maildir format, but it doesn't seem likely to solve the problem. Again, KMail had NO problem importing the mbox files from Thunderbird, it retained all the directory structures, dates, attachments, etc. But nothing is accessible, only the listings. All I get is that cryptic and totally uninformative error message:

"Unable to fetch item from backend (collection 0): Unable to retrieve item from resources: Invalid item retrieved."

Is there anyone out there who knows what this error message means?

You may want to try this:

- ensure KMail is closed
- Open a terminal
- Type "akonadictl restart"
- Restart KMail
- Try to access the bad folder
- Note if any output appears in the terminal once you access the bad folder and paste it here (if long, use a pastebin service like paste.kde.org).

Should you want to convert to maildir instead , you can try to use the "mb2md" program (it's in the Ubuntu repository so I assume Mint would have it too) to convert the mbox file to a maildir.

OK, I did as you suggested, the terminal output is at http://pastebin.com/BcHQHRB6 but it didn't fix the problem. The initial output from the command ends at line 238, then I started KMail and what you see from line 239 onward is the resulting output in the terminal.

It's all gibberish to me, if it's meaningful to you then great!! Thanks for trying....

<<Brad>>

I think the by far easiest way would be to open an imap account somewhere, connect Outlook to it.
Copy the existing outlook folders to the imap account
open Kmail and connect to the imap account, make it disconnected if you like me are not 100 online

after that you can move/copy the imap folder structure to Local Folders and use pop access instead should you wish to

The .pst file is almost 4GB in size. Even if I could find an email provider who would accept such an upload, it would take days to accomplish....

sinclair wrote:I think the by far easiest way would be to open an imap account somewhere, connect Outlook to it.
Copy the existing outlook folders to the imap account
open Kmail and connect to the imap account, make it disconnected if you like me are not 100 online

after that you can move/copy the imap folder structure to Local Folders and use pop access instead should you wish to

bmcgann wrote:The .pst file is almost 4GB in size. Even if I could find an email provider who would accept such an upload, it would take days to accomplish....

sinclair wrote:I think the by far easiest way would be to open an imap account somewhere, connect Outlook to it.
Copy the existing outlook folders to the imap account
open Kmail and connect to the imap account, make it disconnected if you like me are not 100 online

after that you can move/copy the imap folder structure to Local Folders and use pop access instead should you wish to

Well there is always Gmail - but I get you, I have capped and slow internet myself. You can set up an internal imap server, I have an outdated link. Hopefully you can get at least ideas there:
http://www.howtoforge.com/converting_ou ... to_maildir