Evolution email is like other email programs in all the ways you would hope: It can sort and organize your mail in a wide variety of ways with folders, searches, and filters. It can send and receive mail in HTML or as plain text, and permits multiple file attachments. It supports multiple mail sources, including IMAP, POP3, local mbox and mh files, and even NNTP messages (newsgroups), which aren't technically email. However, Evolution has some important differences. First, it's built to handle very large amounts of mail without slowing down or crashing. Both the filtering and searching functions were built for speed and efficiency on gargantuan volumes of mail. There's also the Evolution Virtual Folder, an advanced organizational feature not found in many other mail clients. If you get a lot of mail, or if you keep every message you get in case you need to refer to it later, you'll find this feature especially useful. You can start reading email by clicking Inbox in the shortcut bar. The first time you use Evolution, it will start with the Inbox open and show you a message from Ximian welcoming you to the application. Your Evolution Inbox will look something like the one in . If you find the view pane too small, you can resize the pane, enlarge the whole window, or double-click on the message in the message list to have it open in a new window. To change the sizes of a pane, just click and hold on the divider between the two panes. Then you can drag up and down to select the size of the panes. Just like with folders, you can right-click on messages in the message list and get a menu of possible actions.

Inbox

Email Viewer This is where your email is displayed. Email List The Email List lists off all the emails that you have. This includes all your read, unread, and email that is flagged to be deleted. Most of the mail-related actions you'll want to perform are listed in the Message menu in the menu bar. The most frequently used ones, like Reply and Forward, also appear as buttons in the toolbar, and almost all of them are duplicated in the right-click menu and as keyboard shortcuts, which tend to be faster once you get the hang of them. You can choose whichever way you like best; the idea is that the software should work the way you want, rather than making you work the way the it does. To look at the entire source of your email message, including all the header information, select ViewSource One of the ways Evolution lets you choose the way you work is the way it lets you sort your message lists. To sort by sender, subject, or date, click on the bars with those labels at the top of the message list. The direction of the arrow next to the label indicates the direction of the sort, and if you click again, you'll sort them in reverse order. For example, click once on Date to sort messages by date from oldest to newest. Click again, and Evolution sorts the list from newest to oldest. You can also right-click on the message header bars to get a set of sorting options, and add or remove columns from the message list. You can find detailed instructions on how to customize your message display columns in . You can also choose a threaded message view. Select View Threaded to turn the threaded view on or off. When you select this option, Evolution groups the replies to a message with the original, so you can follow the thread of a conversation from one message to the next. Once you've read your mail, you may want to get rid of it. To mark a message for deletion, select it in the the message list by clicking on it once. Then click on the Delete button in the tool bar. Or, right-click on a message and choose Delete from the right-click menu. The message will appear with a line through it, to show that you've marked it for deletion. If you change your mind and decide you want to keep it, select Message Undelete. If you really want to get rid of it, choose Expunge from the Folder menu. That will delete it permanently. Now that you've had a look around the Inbox, it's time to check for new mail. Click Get mail in the toolbar to check your mail. If it's the first time you've done so, the mail setup assistant will ask you for the information it needs to check your mail (see for more information). Then, you need to enter your email password. Evolution will remember your password until until you select Settings Forget Passwords . Once it's validated the password, Evolution will check your mail. New mail will appear in the local Inbox if you're using a POP account, and in your IMAP folders if you use IMAP. If you have chosen to use IMAP, and you have multiple folders on your IMAP server, you may need to subscribe to them. To learn how to use the subscription manager, read . If you get an error message instead of mail, you probably need to change your network settings. To learn how to do that, have a look at , or ask your system administrator. Newsgroups are so similar to email that there's no reason not to read them side by side. If you want to do that, add a news source to your configuration (see ). The news server will appear as a remote server, and will look quite similar to an IMAP folder. When you click Get Mail, Evolution will also check for news messages. If someone sends you an attachment, a file attached to an email, Evolution will display the file at the bottom of the message to which it's attached. Text, HTML, and most images will be displayed within the message itself. For other files, Evolution will show an icon at the end of the message. Right-click on the icon to get a list of options which will vary depending on the type of attachment. You will have the option to display most files as part of the message, export them to a different application (images to Eye of GNOME, spreadsheets to Gnumeric, and so forth), or save them to disk. Evolution can also display HTML-formatted mail, complete with graphics. HTML formatting will display automatically, although you can turn it off if you prefer. You can start writing a new email message by selecting File New Mail Message, or by pressing the Compose button in the Inbox toolbar. When you do so, the New Message window will open, as shown in .

Evolution Main Window

Enter an address in the To: field, a subject in the Subject: and a message in the big empty box at the bottom of the window, and press Send. Evolution will send mail immediately unless you tell it to do otherwise by selecting File Send Later. This will add your messages to the Outbox queue. Then, when you press Send in another message, or Get Mail in the main mail window, all your unsent messages will go out at once. Many times, one might want to use "Send Later" becuase it gives you a chance to change your mind about a message before it is sent. This way, you may not say something you may regret. To learn more about how you can specify message queue and filter behavior, see . You can also choose to save messages as drafts or as text files. Choose File Save or Save As to save your message as a text file. If you prefer to keep your message in a folder (the Drafts folder would be the obvious place), you can select File Save In Folder . You can probably guess the purpose of the buttons labelled Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo and Redo, but there's a bit more to sending mail that's less obvious. In the next few sections, you'll see how Evolution handles additional features, including large recipient lists, attachments, and forwarding. If you want to attach a file to your email message, you can drag it from your desktop into the message window, or click the button in the toolbar with a paper clip on it, labelled Attach. If you click the Attach button, Evolution will open a file selection dialog box to ask you which file you want to send. Select the file and click OK. To hide the display of files you've attached to the message, select View Hide Attachments ; to show them again, choose Show Attachments. When you send the message, a copy of the attached file will go with it. Be aware that big attachments can take a long time to download. When recieving a message that has an attached image, Evolution gives you the choice whether to view it or not. You can choose to have it always shown, load images only if the sender is in your addressbook, or never load images. Evolution, like most email programs recognizes three types of addressee: primary recipients, secondary recipients, and hidden ("blind") recipients. The simplest way to direct a message is to put the email address or addresses in the To: field, which denotes primary recipients. To send mail to more than one or two people, you can use the the Cc: field. Hearkening back to the dark ages when people used typewriters and there were no copy machines, "Cc" stands for "Carbon Copy." Use it whenever you want to share a message you've written to someone else. When Susan sends an email to a client, she puts her co-worker, Tim, in the in the Cc: field, so that he know what's going on. The client can see that Tim also received the message, and knows that he can talk to Tim about the message as well. Tim is sending an email announcement to all of his company's clients, some of whom are in competition with each other, and all of whom value their privacy. He needs to use the Bcc: field here. If he puts every address from his address book's "Clients" category into the To: or Cc: fields, he'll make the company's entire client list public. However, but putting his "Clients" addressbook into the Bcc: section, that will cause them to be hidden from the competition. It seems insignificant, but it can make a huge difference in some situations. f you have created address cards in the contact manager, you can also enter nicknames or other portions of address data, and Evolution will transparently complete the address for you. If you enter a name or nickname that can go with more than one card, Evolution will open a dialog box to ask you which person you meant. Alternately, you can click on the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: buttons to get a list — potentially a very long one — of the email addresses in your contact manager. Select addresses and click on the arrows to move them into the appropriate address columns. For more information about using email together with the contact manager and the calendar, see and . To reply to a message, press the Reply button while it is selected, or choose Reply to Sender from the message's right-click menu. That will open the message composer. The To: and Subject fields will already be filled, although you can alter them if you wish. In addition, the full text of the old message is inserted into the new message, either in italics (for HTML display) or with the > character before each line (in plain text mode), to indicate that it's part of the previous message. People often intersperse their message with the quoted material as shown in .

Evolution Main Window

If you're reading a message with several recipients, you may wish to use Reply to All instead of Reply. If there are large numbers of people in the Cc: or To: fields, this can save substantial amounts of time. Susan sends an email to a client and sends copies to Tim and to an internal company mailing list of co-workers. If Tim wants to make a comment for all of them to read, he uses Reply to All, but if he just wants to tell Susan that he agrees with her, he uses Reply. Note that his reply will not reach anyone that Susan put on her Bcc list, since that list is not shared with anyone. You may want to reply to a whole mailing list. For this, you would use the Reply to List instead of the standard Reply or Reply to All. Mailing Lists are one of the most popular ways in which group collaboration on the internet works. They allow people to send one message to one server. The server then knows who is subscribed to the mailing list, and sends a copy of your email to all the people on the list. As a matter of fact, mailing lists are one of the main ways in which Evolution was developed. There are two different types of mailing lists. The first is a general submission list. That means that anyone can write to the list. The second is a managed list. The managed lists have someone running them. They can do as little as limit who subscribes to the list or as much as moderate which emails get on the list. You're probably familiar with search and replace features, and if you come from a Linux or Unix background, you probably know what Find Regex does. If you aren't among the lucky who already know, here's a quick rundown of an important section of the Edit menu. Find Enter a word or phrase, and Evolution will find it in your message. Find Regex Find a regex, also called a regular expression, in your composer window. Find Again Select this item to repeat the last search you performed. Replace Find a word or phrase, and replace it with something else. For all of these menu items, you can choose whether or not to Search Backwards in the document from the point where your cursor is. For all but the regular expression search (which doesn't need it), you are offered a check box to determine whether the search is to be Case Sensitive when it determines a match. Normally, you can't set text styles or insert pictures in emails, which is why you've probably seen people use far too many exclamation points for emphasis, or use emoticons to convey their feelings. However, most newer email programs can display images and text styles as well as basic alignment and paragraph formatting. They do this with HTML, just like web pages do. Some people do not have HTML-capable mail clients, or prefer not to receive HTML-enhanced mail because it is slower to download and display. Some people refer to HTML mail as "the root of all evil" and get very angry if you send them HTML mail, which is why Evolution sends plain text unless you explicitly ask for HTML. To send HTML mail, you will need to select Format HTML. Alternately, you can set your default mail format preferences in the mail configuration dialog. See for more information. HTML formatting tools are located in the toolbar just above the space where you'll actually compose the message, and they also appear in the Insert and Format menus. The icons in the toolbar are explained in tool-tips, which appear when you hold your mouse over the buttons. The buttons fall into four categories: Headers and lists At the left edge of the toolbar, you can choose Normal for a default text style or Header 1 through Header 6 for varying sizes of header from large (1) to tiny (6). Other styles include pre, to use the HTML tag for preformatted blocks of text, and three types of List Item for the highly organized. Text style Use these buttons to determine the way your letters look. If you have text selected, the style will apply to the selected text. If you do not have text selected, the style will apply to whatever you type next. The buttons are: Push B for bold text Push I for italics Push U to underline Push S for a strikethrough. Alignment Located next to the text style buttons, these three paragraph icons should be familiar to users of most word processing software. The leftmost button will make your text aligned to the left, the center button, centered, and the right hand button, aligned on the right side. Indentation rules The button with the arrow pointing left will reduce a paragraph's indentation, and the right arrow will increase its indentation. Color Selection At the far right is the color section tool. The colored box displays the current text color; to choose a new one, click the arrow button just to the right. If you have text selected, the color will apply to the selected text. If you do not have text selected, the color will apply to whatever you type next. There are three tools that you can find only in the Insert menu. Insert Link: Use this tool to put hyperlinks in your HTML messages. When you select it, Evolution will prompt you for the Text that will appear, and the Link, where you should enter the actual web address (URL). If you don't want special link text, you can just enter the address directly, and Evolution will recognize it as a link. Insert Image: Select this item to embed an image into your email, as was done in the welcome message. Images will appear at the location of the cursor. This is different from attaching them to a message, but not very different. Insert Rule: This will insert a horizontal line, or rule, into your document. You'll be presented with a dialog box which gives you the choice of size, percentage of screen, shading, and alignment; if you leave everything at the default values you'll get a thin black rule all the way across the screen. The composer is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for HTML. That means that if you enter HTML directly into the composer— say, <B>Bold Text</B>, the the composer will assume you meant exactly that string of characters, and not "make this text bold," as an HTML composition tool or text editor would. The post office forwards your mail for you when you change addresses, and you can forward mail when you get a letter by mistake. The email Forward button works in much the same way. It's particularly useful if you have received a message and you think someone else would like to see it. You can forward a message as an attachment to a new message (this is the default) or you can send it inline as a quoted portion of the message you are sending. Attachment forwarding is best if you want to send the full, unaltered message on to someone else. Inline forwarding is best if you want to send portions of a message, or if you have a large number of comments on different sections of the message you are forwarding. Remember to note from whom the message came, and where, if at all, you have removed or altered content. To forward a message you are reading, press Forward on the toolbar, or select Message Forward . If you prefer to forward the message inline instead of attached, select Message Forward Inline from the menu. Choose an addressee as you would when sending a new message; the subject will already be entered, but you can alter it. Enter your comments on the message in the composition frame, and press Send. I started with ten, but four were "Don't send spam." Don't send spam or forward chain mail. If you must, watch out for hoaxes and urban legends, and make sure the message doesn't have multiple layers of greater-than signs, (>) indicating multiple layers of careless in-line forwarding. Always begin and close with a salutation. Say "please" and "thank you," just like you do in real life. You can keep your pleasantries short, but be pleasant! ALL CAPS MEANS YOU'RE SHOUTING! Don't write a whole message in capital letters. It hurts people's ears. Check your spelling and use complete sentences. Don't send nasty emails (flames). If you get one, don't write back. When you reply or forward, include just enough of the previous message to provide context: not too much, not too little. Happy mailing!