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, select ToolsMail
Settings in the Inbox. This
will open the mail preferences window,
illustrated in . Mail
preferences are separated into several categories:
Accounts
This allows you to create and alter one or more identities for your
email.
Display
Allows you to edit how email is handled and displayed.
Composer
Customizes the composer's behavior.
Other
Configures miscellanious aspects of Evolution
such as character sets.
Mail Preferences DialogSetting mail preferencesIdentity Settings
If you have only one email account, or send email from only
one address, you will only need to configure one identity. If
you want, however, you can have multiple identities. This
can be useful if you want to keep personal and professional
email separate, or if you wear several hats at work.
To add a new identity, simply click
Add. To alter an existing identity,
click on it in the Identity tab of the
Preferences window, and then click
Edit.
Evolution will then present you
with a dialog box containing four fields:
Full Name: by default, this is the
same name as the full name described in your user
account on your computer. You can select another if you
wish.
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.
It's good form to keep it to four lines at the maximum.
Network Settings
In order to send mail 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 program, you can almost certainly use the same
settings as you did with that program. Network-related
settings are in the Mail Sources and
Mail Transport tabs.
Mail Sources
The Mail Sources tab allows you to
add, edit, or delete methods of retrieving mail from
servers. Clicking on Add or
Edit will bring up a dialog box to
offer you the following options:
Mail source type:
Select from IMAP or POP servers, or Unix-style
mbox
or mh
files.
Server:
Enter the name of the mail source server in this
field. Your POP server may or may not be the same as your
SMTP server.
Username:
Enter the user name for the account you have on the
server - this should the part of your email address
before the @. If you use
mbox
or mh
files as your mail source, you do not need to enter
a username.
Authentication:
Tell Evolution how to
verify your identity with the server. Your options
vary depending upon the type of server you are
using, and the ways it is configured. Given the
name of a server,
Evolution can detect what
sorts of authentication it offers.
Test Settings
Click this button to have
Evolution check to see if
mail sources are configured correctly.
If you have several mail sources, clicking Get
Mail will refresh any IMAP,
mh, or
mbox
listings and check and download mail from all POP servers.
In other words, Get Mail gets your
mail, no matter how many sources you have, or what types
they are. You can disable checking mail on accounts in their
properties.
Sharing Mailboxes with Other Mail Programs
If you want to use Evolution
and another email client, such as
Mutt, at the same time,
here's how:
Download your mail in the other application as
you would normally.
In EvolutionToolsMail
Settings, and pick the account
you'd like to use to share mail. You may want to
create a new account just for this source of
mail.
Under the Receiving Mail
tab, select the type of mail file that your
other mail application uses, and then enter the
full path to that file.
Click the OK button.
Mail Transports
The Mail Transports tab lets you choose
how you will send mail. Evolution currently supports two
mail transport options: SMTP, which
uses a remote mail server, and
sendmail, which uses the
sendmail program on your local
system. Sendmail is more
difficult to configure, but offers more flexibility than
SMTP.
To use SMTP, you'll need to enter the
name of your SMTP server. It may have the same name as
your mail source server.
Evolution can attempt to
determine if you have entered a valid server name. To
have it do so, click the Test
Settings button.
Other Mail Preferences
Not everything fits neatly into categories. This tab
contains some miscellaneous configurations that don't have
too much to do with each other.
Send messages in HTML format
If you check this box, you will send
messages as HTML by default. If you leave it unchecked, your
messages will be sent without HTML formatting unless you select
FormatHTML in the message composer.
See
for more information about HTML mail.
Mark Messages as Read After
When you click on a message,
Evolution will wait a
moment before marking it as read. You can set the
delay, in milliseconds, here.
Folder Format
By default,
Evolution saves its mail
in the
mbox
format. You can switch to the
mh
format if you like. Note that this is an advanced
feature and may cause you to lose some messages, so
you should probably make a backup of your
evolution
directory first. In addition, it will take quite
some time if you have a large mailbox.
Configuring the Calendar
To set your calendar preferences, select
SettingsCalendar
Configuration from the Calendar
view. This will open up the
Preferences window. It contains three
tabs: Calendar, TaskPad, Reminders. The calendar
preferences window is illustrated in .
Calendar Preferences DialogIf this worked on my job as well as my calendar...Time Display Settings
The 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, you can
still schedule an appointment outside of these hours,
and if you do, the display will be extended to show
it.
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 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 colors 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.
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. These beeps
are distinct from full-fledged audio alarms. 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 your audio alarms 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.
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:
Adding Directory Servers
To add a new LDAP server to your available contact
folders, select ActionsNew Directory Server. This brings up a small dialog box which
will let you enter the following options:
Name — any name you choose for the server.
Description — a longer description of the server.
LDAP Server — the network address of the server.
Port Number — by default, the port number is 389.
Root DN — enter the root DN here.
General Preferences
Additional configuration options will be covered here, as
they become available.