Email is an integral part of life these days, and Evolution mail is here to help you keep track of it. 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 recieve mail in HTML or as plain text, and supports file attachments. It lets you use a wide variety of mail sources, including IMAP, POP3, and local files. However, Evolution has some important differences. First, it's built to handle very large amounts of mail without slowing down or crashing. We had high mail volumes in mind when we designed our filtering and searching functions. There's also the Evolution vFolder, an advanced organizational feature not found in 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 that feature especially useful. You can start reading email by clicking Inbox in the shortcut bar. By default, the Inbox is open when you start Evolution, and the first time you see your inbox, there's a message in it from Helix Code welcoming you to the application. The first time you open your Evolution Inbox, you will see a window like the one in , with a message from Helix Code in the message list. The message is displayed below that, in the view pane. If you find the view pane too small, you can double-click on the message in the message list to have it open in a new window. As is the case with folders, you can right-click on messages in the message list and get a menu of possible actions. Go ahead and click on the message in the message list. That selects the message. Then click on the Delete button in the tool bar. The message now has a line through it, because you've marked it for deletion. If you really want to get rid of it, choose Expunge from the Tools menu. That will delete it permanently. If you want to keep it, click Delete again, and it will no longer be marked as deleted. At some point in the future, this feature will change to something a little less counter-intuitive.

Evolution Mail

To check your email, just click Get mail in the toolbar. If this is 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, Evolution will download your mail for you and send any mail you've marked ready to send. New mail will appear in your Inbox and also in the Today View. 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. If you receive a file attached to an email, Evolution will display it at the bottom of the message to which it's attached. Click on the attachment icon or text, and Evolution will ask you where you want to put the file. Once you've done that, you can open, move, copy, or execute it just like any other, using Nautilus or your favorite shell or file manager. Evolution can also display HTML-formatted mail, complete with graphics. HTML formatting will display automatically, although you can turn it off if you prefer. It can also display live documents, which have scripted or executable contents— for example, a working spreadsheet page or a chess game. Don't worry about security. When someone you don't know sends you a program by email, assume it's a really cool game. Mark it executable and run it, no matter what. You can start writing a new email message by selecting New Mail from the File Menu, or by pressing Ctrl-N. When you do so, the New Message window will open, as shown in .

Evolution Main Window

Enter an address in the To: field, a message in the Message: field, and press Send. That's easy. It may even be too easy, which is why I like to queue my messages up to be sent a few minutes later. Evolution will send mail immediately unless you tell it to do otherwise by selecting Send Later from the MENU. Then, when you press Send & Receive, all your unsent messages will go out at once. I like to use "Send Later" because it gives me a chance to change my mind about a message before it goes out. That way, I don't send anything I'll regret the next day. To learn more about how you can specify message queue and filter behavior, see . There is quite a bit more to sending mail, though. In the next few sections, you'll see how Evolution handles additional features, including mailing lists, attachments, and forwarding. If you have created address cards in the contact manager, you can also enter nicknames or other portions of address data, and Evolution will complete the address for you. (INSERT description of UI for this feature, once it is decided upon). 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. (QUESTION: will users be able to drag & drop address cards to send email?). For more information about using email together with the contact manager and the calendar, see and . In addition, you can mark recipients in three different ways. The To: field is for the primary recipients of the message you are going to send. However, it is considered bad form to have more than a few email addresses in this section. If you're writing to one person, but want to keep a third party up to date, you can use Cc:. 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. Say, for example, 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 recieved the message, and know that they can talk to Tim about the message as well. If you have a large number of recipients, or if you want to send mail to several people without sharing the recipient list, you should use BCc:. "BCc" stands for "Blind Carbon Copy", and means that people listed in the BCc: are excluded from the recipient list, although they will receive the message and the list of addresses from the To: and Cc: fields. Let's say Tim sends an email to a client, and wants his supervisor to know what he wrote. He doesn't, however, want the client to start writing his supervisor about the project— it's Tim's job to deal with the client. So Tim puts his supervisor's email address in the BCc: field. That way, the client has one contact, and the boss stays in the loop. In order to reply to a message, click on it once in the message list to select it. Then press the Reply button. A window like the New Message window will appear, but the subject will already be present— the same subject as the message to which you are replying, but with Re: before it, to mark it as a reply. In addition, the full text of the previous message is inserted into the new message, either in italics (for HTML display) or with the > character (in plain text mode) before each line. This indicates quoting. You can intersperse your message with the quoted material as shown in

Evolution Main Window

If a message has several recipients, as in the case of mailing lists or messages that have been carbon copied, you may wish to select one of the items under the Reply-To submenu on the MENU menu. This will allow you to choose one or several of the other message recipients in addition to the person who originally sent you the message. If there are large numbers of people in the Cc: or To: fields, this can save substantial amounts of time. In addition, Reply-To makes it very easy to keep off-topic conversation away from mailing lists and newsgroups. Returning again to the email Susan sent to Tim and their client, you'll note that the Reply-To feature allows the client to decide whether to reply just to Susan, or to both Tim and Susan by selecting a menu item, rather than by cutting and pasting the email addresses. Evolution allows you to make your email more attractive in a number of ways. You can send messages formatted with HTML, attach any sort of file to them, and even include live documents, like spreadhseets or chess games. This section will tell you how. Most email messages are sent as plain text, but they can also be sent as HTML, which means they can include color, text style, and other formatting information. Evolution will read and display HTML properly without trouble, and also allows you to send outgoing email messages as HTML. To send an HTML message, just use the composition toolbar to add formatting; your message text will appear formatted in the composer window, and the message will be sent as HTML. You can't use the composer window to create web pages, at least not if you plan to hand-code them with HTML. If you enter HTML directly into the composer— say, <B>Bold Text</B>, the the composer will assume you meant exactly that, and not "make this text bold," as a HTML composition tool would. For the very technically inclined, that means that when the text <B> is sent as HTML, it will be converted to the string &lt;B&gt;. Real gearheads should wonder how I got all that stuff straight, given that I'm writing this in SGML. 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 the default in Evolution is plain text. If you choose to send HTML mail, but have an address book entry for someone who does not wish to receive HTML-enhanced mail, you can note that preference in their address card. The mailer will automatically strip the HTML tags from any messages you send to that address. If you want to attach a file to your email message, you can do so by . If your recipients can read HTML mail, you can put an image inside the mail by dragging the file into the composer window, or by selecting Menu Item from the Menu menu. Still, unless you know what email client the recipient is using, it's best to send a message or attachment in the simplest manner possible. Later versions of Evolution will allow you to enliven your email with almost any sort of document, and even with entire applications. At this point, however, this feature has not yet been implimented. Forward is useful if you have received a message and you think someone else would like to see it, or if you get a message intended for someone else. You can forward a message as an attachment to a new message (the default way of forwarding) 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 entire message you received, unaltered. 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, first make sure it is selected by clicking it once in the message list. Then, press Forward on the toolbar, or select SOMETHING. To forward a message inline instead of attached, select Forward Inline from the Message 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." 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! Never write anything in email you wouldn't say in public. Old messages have a nasty habit of resurfacing when you least expect them to. Check your spelling and use complete sentences. Don't send nasty emails (flames). If you get one, don't write back. Don't send spam or forward chain mail. If you must, verify any rumors, and make sure the message doesn't have multiple layers of email quotation symbols (>) indicating multiple layers of careless inline forwarding. When you reply or forward, include just enough of the previous message to provide context. Not too much, not too little. Happy mailing! Even if you only get a few email messages a day, you probably want to sort and organize them. When you get a hundred a day and you want to refer to a message you received six weeks ago, you need to sort and organize them, and Evolution has the tools to help you do it. Evolution keeps mail, as well as address cards and calendars, in folders. Some, like Inbox, Outbox, and Drafts have already been created for you. If you like, you can create new folders by selecting New and then Folder from the File menu. You must specify both the name and the type of the folder; a folder can hold mail, calendars, or address cards, but you can't mix them up. Some people don't like that. Too bad. The new folders will appear in the folder view, and you can drag them wherever you want to relocate them. You can drag messages around too. If you create filters with the filter assistant, you can have mail moved to a folder automatically. An email message can be in only one folder at a time, just like real mail in real folders. Because Evolution automatically creates an index of every email you send or receive, it can search through your old messages and present you with results very quickly. You can search through just the message subjects, just the message body, or both body and subjet. To create a search, enter the word or phrase you're looking for in the form field below the toolbar, and choose a search type: Body or subject contains: This will search message subjects and the messages themselves for the word or phrase you've entered in the search field. Body contains: This will search only in message text, not the subject lines. Subject contains: This will show you messages where the search text is in the subject line. It will not search in the message body. Body does not contain: This finds every email message that does not have the search text in the message body. It will still show messages that have the search text in the subject line, if it is not also in the body. Subject does not contain:This finds every mail whose subject does not contain the search text. Then, press Enter. Evolution will show your search results in Filters sort your email for you. People who subscribe to multiple mailing lists, or who often need to refer to messages they have sent, find filters especially helpful to seperate personal from list-related mail, but they're good for anybody who gets more than a few messages a day. To create a filter, go to your Inbox. Then select Filter Assistant from the Tools menu. This will bring up a window which will guide you through filter creation. The filter assistant is shown in

Creating a new Filter

The filter assistant window contains a window listing rules, and an option to create a new rule. To start filtering your mail, click Add to add a filtering rule. You'll decide when it should take place: When mail arrives: Select this option to have messages filtered as they arrive. When mail is sent: Select this option to filter your outgoing mail. You can use this feature to keep your Outbox as organized as your Inbox. Then, the filter assistant will ask you which emails it should act upon. You can set criteria to include words or phrases in the subject, To:, Cc: or body of the message. (FIXME: WHAT ELSE?) Once you've decided which messages to filter, the assistant will ask you the sort of action you wish to take. More details and screenshots should follow here. Any incoming email that does not meet filter action criteria remains in the Inbox. If you move a folder, your filters will follow it. If you find that filters aren't flexible enough for you, or end up performing the same search again and again, you should consider a virtual folder. Virtual folders, or vFolders, are an advanced way of viewing your email messages within Evolution. If you get a lot of mail or often forget where you put messages, vFolders can help you stay on top of things. A vFolder is really a hybrid of all the other organizational tools: it looks like a folder, it acts like a search, and you set it up like a filter. Once you've set it up, you'll be able to open it and read the messages in it as though it were a normal mail folder. It's not a folder, though, because when you open a vFolder, Evolution performs a search for you. It's not a regular search, though, because you can build a vFolder with a very complicated set of criteria with multiple inclusions and exclusions, as though you were setting up a filter. As messages that meet the vFolder criteria arrive or are deleted, Evolution will automatically place them in and and remove them from the vFolder contents list. When you delete a message, it gets erased from the folder in which it actually exists, as well as any vFolders which include it. That's pretty complicated, but it can be useful. For example, if I have a folder for all the email from one person, and another folder for all the email on a given topic, I feel organized. But when the person sends me mail about the topic, my whole email filing universe becomes chaotic, and I need vFolders to save the day for me. That sounds silly, but imagine a business trying to keep track of mail from hundreds of vendors and clients, or a university with overlapping and changing groups of faculty, staff, administrators and students. The larger the system, the less you can afford the sort of confusion that stems from an organizational system that's not flexible enough. vFolders make for better organization because they can accept overlapping groups in a way that regular folders and filing systems can't. To organize my mail box, I can set up a vFolder for emails from my friend Vince, by doing (INSERT PROCESS HERE). Then, whenever I want to see the messages Vince has sent me, I open the vFolder, and every message he's sent me shows up, no matter where I've actually filed it. If I want, I can also create a vFolder containing any message from my list of co-workers which also has the name of the project in it. That way, when Vince sends me mail about the project, I can see that message both in the "Vince" vFolder and in the "Project" vFolder. That's because when I open up the "Vince" folder, I'm really performing a search for all the mail from Vince, and when I open the "Project" folder I'm really performing a search for all the mail about the project. (INSERT SCREENSHOT HERE) To create a vFolder, select VFolder Assistant from the Tools menu in the main window. This will bring up a dialog box that looks suspiciously like the Filter Assistant (for more information on filters, see ), and which presents you with a list of vFolders you have previously created. If you have already created vFolders, you can click on them in the frame labelled Select Rule Type, and edit or remove them. If you have not created any, there will be only one available option: click Add to add a new vFolder. You'll be prompted to create a filtering rule. To do so, select one of the base rules, and click Next to customize it. Your options are: For matching messages: you may select one or more search criteria; the vFolder you create will contain messages that match all of them. Messages from a certain person: you enter an email address, and the vFolder will contain any messages from that address. Messages to a certain address: any messages sent directly to this address will be in the vFolder you create. Messages with a given subject: enter a subject, and the vFolder will contain messages with that subject. as is shown in

Selecting a vFolder Rule

Once you click Next, you'll customize the vFolder rule. This process is somewhat complicated, but promises to get much more simple in future versions of Evolution. As it stands now, try clicking different things to have the sentence in the bottom frame make sense.