Hi Pete it really is driving me nuts the offending file is the one with 5050 in the name
richard@richard-Inspiron-3580:~/.cache/evolution/mail$ ls -ls total 12 4 drwx------ 3 richard richard 4096 Feb 5 08:54 0656774d545ea2bb57c9be746823f7d3f567198c 4 drwx------ 2 richard richard 4096 Feb 5 15:35 1527769677.8716.2@richard-Inspiron-N5030 4 drwxrwxrwx 3 richard richard 4096 Feb 5 15:57 7bb2e693532a510fb41eca211d9e5a026556fa10 I can shut down evo , delete that directory, and as soon as evo is restarted it reappears. Yes, because that is the name of the cache directory that Evolution creates. Evolution needs a cache directory in order to store its cache so creates it if it doesn't exist. I have tried deleting the account, from within evo and running sudo apt purge evolimple way of flushing the cache so it can start as a > virgin installution that should remove evo and all its config files, then deleted .cache/evolution but when I re install evo , everything that was deleted just reappeared No. On Linux removing an application does not remove user configuration files. In general re-installing things doesn't magically make things work. Now I suspect that as when a file is deleted the space it used still contains the data, until overwritten some mechanism may be recovering what was deleted. No, absolutely not what is happening at all. There must be a simple way of flushing the cache so it can start as a virgin install or getting rid of that mail directory. Don't be fixated on the cache. The cache just stores temporary files to save continually getting data from the network. The account configuration is stored elsewhere. Andre has already pointed you to information on where all the Evolution data files are. Before playing with any of the configuration files you must ensure that Evolution, and all it's ancillary programs are shut down. Some of them (such as dconf) maintain in-memory copies of the data that are written out when the program shuts down. (This DOES NOT apply to the cache.) apologies for using html, the reason was line wrapping Please avoid it if you can, and also avoid top posting on this list. P. _______________________________________________ evolution-list mailing list evolution-list@gnome.org To change your list options or unsubscribe, visit ... https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-list