[CS-FSLUG] Recovering Evolution Address Book

[Nathan T.]

Hey everyone,

We've had a disaster with dad's computer. He trusted all his e-mail  
in the hands of Evolution without making a back-up, and after a bad  
update in Ubuntu he lost everything. We have what looks like the  
original files, but either the data therein got messed up, or simply  
nothing including Evolution will open older Evolution address books.  
We have a collection of .db files, they are in binary and as such  
filtering through by hand won't do us any good. I've tried moving the  
old files over to a new evolution on another computer, but it just  
wouldn't see the old contacts or the address books. We've also tried  
importing, and evolution doesn't have the ability to import it's own  
address books as they were stored. Finally we tried looking at  
alternatives, and even waiting to see if the original evolution  
installation would be fixed after some updates, but it was all  
without success.

I need to know now, after exhausting several days on building a new  
computer for dad, installing CentOS on it, and then trying to use it  
to recover the evolution contacts or even the old e-mails. Is there  
anything we can do to recover those contacts, or are they gone forever?

Just so we know what the score is, I've tried importing the address  
books with Sylpheed, KMail, and Evolution.

PS. I know what you're all thinking, and yes I've told him over and  
over and over again that he should keep some kind of back-up.