Advanced Configuration
Perhaps your mail server has changed names. Perhaps you've
grown tired of a certain layout for your appointments.
Whatever the reason, you want to change your
Evolution settings. This chapter
will tell you how to do just that.
Mail Settings
To change your mail settings, first go to your
Inbox. Then select Mail
Settings from the Tools menu.
This will open the mail preferences
window, illustrated in . Mail Preferences are
seperated into several categories:
Identity, which allows you to set
your name, email address, and other information. The
default values are the ones found on your system account.
Sources, which allows you to specify
your mail receiving server and protocols.
Transports, which allows you to
specify how you will send mail.
Identity Settings
If you have only one email address, or use automatic
forwarding to funnel multiple addresses to one account, then
you will only need to configure one identity. You may,
however, want more that one. To alter an identity, click on
it in the Identity tab of the
Preferences window, and then click
Edit. To add a new identity, simply
click Add.
In either case, you'll be presented with a dialog box with
four fields:
Full Name: by default, this is the
same name as the full name described in your user
account on your computer.
Email address: Enter your email
address in this space.
Organization: If you send email as
a representative of a company or other organization,
enter its name here.
Signature file: You may choose a
small text file to be appended to every message that you
send. Typically, signature files include address or
other contact information, or a favorite quotation.
They should not be more than three lines long.
Network Settings
In order to do much of anything with
Evolution, you need to connect to
your network. To do that, you'll need to know your user name
and password, what sort of mail sending and receiving
protocols your network uses, and the names of the servers
you'll be using. If you're switching from another groupware
or email progam, you can almost certainly use the same
settings as you did with that program. Select the
Sources tab in the
Preferences window to tell
Evolution where you want to get
your mail, and click Transports to
determine how you want to send your mail.
Mail Sources
The Mail Sources tab allows you to
edit, add, or delete methods of retreiving mail from
servers. Clicking on Add or
Edit will bring up a dialog box to
offer you the following options:
Mail source type:At this point, you
can only select from POP or Unix-style mbox files, but
additional types will be supported in the future.
Server:Enter the name of your mail
server in this field, eg: mail.mycompany.com
Username:Enter your user name here.
Eva Lucy Ann Tester's user name is eltester.
Authentication: Your system
administrator will know which type of authentication
your system requires.
Evolution can also detect
what sorts of authentication are available once it knows
where to find the server.
Test these values before continuing
If this box is checked,
Evolution will attempt to
make sure that all the other entries in the dialog box
are correct.
Transports
The Transports tab lets you set how
you will send mail. As of this writing, you have two
choices: SMTP, which uses a remote
mail server, and sendmail,
which uses the sendmail program
on your local system.
If you choose SMTP, you will need
to know the name of your mail server. Your system
administrator or ISP has probably included that
information on the piece of paper you lost about five
minutes ago. Evolution can
attempt to determine if you have entered the right
server name. To have it do so,
check the box labelled Test these values before
continuing before you click
OK.
Other Mail Preferences
Currently, there is only one option that falls into this
category: Send messages in HTML format.
If you check this box, you will send messages as HTML. If
you leave it unchecked, your messages will be sent without
HTML formatting. See for more
information about HTML mail.
Managing the Contact Manager
To set the behavior of your Contact Manager, click on the
Contact Manager tab in the
Preferences window.
You can set the following options:
Configuring the Calendar
This section discusses calendar-specific preferences. While
looking at your calendar, select
Preferences from the
Edit menu. This will open up the
Preferences window. It contains four
tabs: Time display,
Colors, To Do List
and Alarms. The calendar
preferences window is illustrated in .
Time Display Settings
The first tab, Time display tab, lets
you set the following:
Time formatYou may choose between twelve-hour (AM/PM) and
twenty-four hour time formats here by clicking the
appropriate radio button.
Weeks start onYou can set weeks to start on Sunday or on Monday.Day range
When does your work day start, and when does it end?
In the day and week views,
Evolution displays all the
hours in the range you select here, even if there are
no appointments for those times. Of course, if you
set your days to end before they begin, you may be in
for a little confusion.
Calendar Colors
The colors tab allows you to decide
what color your calendar will be. The tab consists of a
sample calendar on the right and a list of ten items that can
be colored in different ways. If you click on the color
button to the right of each item, you will bring up a
color-selector window where you can choose to alter that
color. By clicking OK in the color
selection dialog, you can see the results of the color on the
sample calendar.
The display elements whose color you can set are:
Outline: The lines between days
and at the top of the display.
Headings: Text color for day
and month names and other headings.
Empty days: This is the
background color for any time slots in which you have no appointments.
Appointments: This is the
background color for any time slots in which you have appointments.
Highlighted day: The
background color for a selected time slot.
Day numbers: Text color for date numbers.
Current day's number: Text color for today's date.
To-Do item that is not yet
due: Text color for To-Do list items that are
not yet due. (Or maybe background color? find out!)
To-Do item that is due today:
Text color for today's tasks.
To-Do item that is overdue:
Text color for overdue tasks.
To Do list settings
You can choose what information the To Do list displays and the
way it is displayed. The two areas of the To Do
List tab offer several options each:
Show on To Do List
This box contains three items. If you select the
check boxes next to them, that information will appear
in the To Do list for each task it contains:
Due DateTime Until DuePriorityStyle Options
Select among the following checkboxes to determine
how your To Do list will look:
Highlight overdue itemsHighlight items due todayHighlight not yet due itemsAlarms settings
The alarms tab enables you to select from three boxes:
Beep on display alarms: select
this box to have Evolution beep
at you for any alarms you have set. If you leave this box
unchecked, Evolution will only
alert you to events by opening a dialog box.
Audio alarms timeout after:
Select this button to have the beeping stop automatically
after a certain number of seconds. Enable snoozing for: If you
would like to have the option to tell
Evolution to repeat an alarm in
a few minutes, select this button and decide how long
you'd like it to wait.
General Preferences
Overall Evolution prefs-- whatever else doesn't fit.