new kmail can't see old kmail messages

Greetings all;


What is the procedure to make kmail recognise about 7GB of kmail-1.9 messages
recovered from backups and placed in their original locations in a bullseye install?


I had a 6 month old 2T seacrate drive commit hari-kari on a stretch install sometime
in the night last thursday, and its been pure hell, 7 installs to get where even webmail
works.  Probably a shingled drive, and a tatal failure, but this new install is nearly
all on SSD's, a single 500GB for /boot, and a 4, 1T SSD raid10 as /home.


So please lead me by the hand.