Solved: Evolution loosing connection to Exchange

6 Mar, 2007 linux

I’ve been running Evolution 2.8.1 on Ubuntu 6.10 for a few months without any problems. Today Evolution started reporting that it has lost it’s connection to Exchange:

"Can't get message, Lost connection to Evolution Exchange backend process"

After half a day of the Exchange web mail interface driving me crazy I finally fixed the problem. The solution turned out to be simple. After removing the Exchange account from Evolution and quitting it I ran the following commands to remove all evidence of Exchange:

% evolution --force-shutdown
% cd ~/.evolution
% rm -rf `find . -name *exch* -print`

I then restarted Evolution and added the Exchange account again.

Warning: Before removing any files or directories you should back up your entire ~/.evolution directory just in case something goes wrong and you need to restore it.

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11 Comments so far »

Cristian said,

Wrote on March 27, 2007 @ 8:38 pm

Thanks, It worked …..
Scott said,

Wrote on April 6, 2007 @ 8:05 am

Didn’t work here…not sure what to do. I would like to start moving away from MS products, but if I can’t get this to work I might still have to run something that Outlook will run on.

Using Ubuntu Edgy
Any help for a Ubuntu newbie would be appreciated
Leonard said,

Wrote on April 10, 2007 @ 5:17 am

Mine was fixed by:

evolution –force-shutdown
cd ~/.evolution
cd mail/exchange

ls (to see what directory is there – in my case only one as I only have one exchange server account)

rm -rfv ./(name of directory)

Restart Evolution – did not have to re-create account
Glenn said,

Wrote on April 13, 2007 @ 10:20 pm

Thx !

Tried to delete all the files in ./evolution but that did’nt help

Have a great weekend!
cw said,

Wrote on April 17, 2007 @ 5:32 am

i used leonard’s method…, it worked for me. FWIW, my problem cropped up after i had disabled some plugins…, i reenabled them and it still was giving me the problem so i used the leonard’s instructions, thanks.
Wascou said,

Wrote on April 23, 2007 @ 8:10 pm

Hi !

Leonard solution worked for me. I’ve also tried before to remove files in the .evolution/exchange folder but it does not work.

Cheers.
VIVABENFICA said,

Wrote on May 1, 2007 @ 3:30 am

worked like a charm. any truth to what i’ve seen elsewhere that this error is related to network manager and/or dbus? i’m content to have this work but i’m curious as to why this happened.
ardo said,

Wrote on May 8, 2007 @ 5:56 pm

Here problem solved on Leonard way.

I think problem happen because often I start evolution offline (–offline) and leave mails on exchange account box.

Thanks
kevin said,

Wrote on May 9, 2007 @ 5:51 pm

works for me too… but had to restart evolution a 2nd time (cos i thought nothing was happening but it was probably downloading all the emails again)
tried to be smartass and jus remove the exchange dir in .evolution but doesn’t work that way
Arthaey Angosii said,

Wrote on May 10, 2007 @ 8:08 am

Leonard’s solution also worked for me. Thanks!

Note that this is an official bug — https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-exchange/+bug/34199 — first reported on 2006-03-09 and still open.
BaroqueW said,

Wrote on April 28, 2008 @ 8:41 pm

Thanks Leonard!
Your solution works great (I don’t think the evolution –force-shutdown is needed though, it works well without it here)
The problem is still an open bug after 2 years

(Evolution 2.12.1)