Evolution email is like other email programs in all the ways that matter: 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 makes it easy to send and recieve 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. Lets you enhance your security with encryption. 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 mainstream 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 displays 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. Almost all of them are also located 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 complete headers for email messages, select ViewMessage DisplayShow Full Headers. To see absolutely every bit, choose ViewMessage DisplayShow Email Source . Evolution helps you work by letting you sort your email. 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 delete a message: Click the message to select it Press delete button or right click on the message and choose Delete. When you do this, your message is marked to be deleted. Your email is not gone until you have expunged it. When you "Expunge" a folder, you remove all the mail that you have marked for deletion. Click Actions Expunge or press Ctrl E Your trash bin is actually a Virtual Folder that displays all messages you have marked for later deletion. For more information about Virtual Folders, see . If you choose Actions Empty Trash you will expunge all your folders. To undelete a message: Select a message you have marked for deletion. Press CtrlU or choose Actions Undelete If you have marked a message for deletion, undeleting it will unmark it, and the message will be removed from the Trash folder. However, it can't bring back messages that have been expunged. 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 you haven't entered any mail settings yet, the setup assistant will ask you for the information it needs to check your email. The assistant will give you several dialog boxes where you configure: your personal information your outgoing email server information your mail account identity name To check your email, press the Check Mail button. If this is your first time checking mail, or you haven't asked Evolution to store your password, you'll be prompted for the password. Enter your password and your email will be downloaded. If you get an error message instead of mail, you probably need to check 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, including HTML formatting, will appear as part of the message. To minimize download time, and to foil spammers who use server information to track their messages, images linked from an HTML message not display unless you select the ViewMessage DisplayLoad Images option. For other files, Evolution will show an icon at the end of the message. To Save an Attachment to Disk: Open up the desired email Click on the down arrow at the bottom of the email for the desired attachment. Select Save to Disk. Choose the directory and filename you wish. Click OK You can click the spacebar to page down while you're reading an email, and press backspace to page up in an email. This may help to make reading your email faster. To Open an Attachment in a Program: Open the mail message with the attachment you want to read. Click the aarrow next the the attachment icon. Select the program you'd like to use. It will start up and open the document. Evolution can also display HTML-formatted mail, complete with graphics. Graphics don't load automatically by default, because they can be large and take a long time to download. They can also be used by spammers to help track who reads their email. So having them not load automatically helps protect your privacy. 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. If you wish enter a subject in the Subject: and a message in the big empty box at the bottom of the window. Once you have revised your message, 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. You might want to use "Send Later" becuase it gives you a chance to change your mind about a message before you send it. 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. Your options are: Choose File Save Draft to store your messages in the drafts folder for later revision. If you'd like to have the message sent later, you can choose Send Later. That way, the message will be added to the queue, and you can send a batch of messages all at once. If you prefer to save your message as a text file, choose Save As and then choose a file name. In the next few sections, you'll see how Evolution handles advanced email features, including large recipient lists, attachments, and forwarding. To attach a file to your email: Push the attach button in the composer toolbar Select the file you want to attach Press OK You can drag a file from your desktop into the composer window to attach it as well. 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 receiving 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. Bcc: is a little more complex. You use it like Cc:, but people on the Bcc: list are hidden from the other recipients of the message. Use it to send mail to large groups of people, especially if they don't know each other or if privacy is a concern. 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. 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. If you have created address cards in the contact manager, you can also enter nicknames or other portions of address data, and Evolution will offer a drop down list of possible address completions from your address book. 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. Also, Evolution will add a domain to any unqualified addresses. By default, this is your domain, but you can choose which one mail preferences dialog. 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 grey (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. If you're subscribed to a mailing list, and want your reply to go just to the list, rather than to the sender, choose Reply to List instead of Reply or Reply to All. Mailing Lists are one of the most popular tools for group collaboration on the Internet. Here's how they work: Someone sends a message to a single address, like evolution@ximian.com. That address belongs to a program that distributes the message to a list of recipients. The mail management program lets individuals subscribe to or unsubscribe from the list at will, without requiring the message writers to remember the addresses of every recipient. Mailing list servers can also let network administrators control mail flow, list membership, and even moderate the content of mailing lists. You are probably familiar with search and replace features in any sort of text-editing software, and if you come from a Linux or Unix background, you may know what Find Regex does. If you aren't among the lucky who already know, here's a quick rundown of the automated text searching features that the message composer makes available to you. 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 preformat, 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. The Insert gives you three opinions which let you spruce up your email to make it more interesting: Insert Link Lets you link some text to a website. Use this tool to put hyperlinks in your HTML messages. 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 Lets you put an image alongside text. Insert Rule Inserts a horizontal line into the text to help divide two sections. To add a hyperlink to your HTML message: Select the text you want to link from Right click on text and select Link Enter the address you wish to link to in the URL field. Press OK. To add an image to your HTML message: Click Insert Image Click Browse Select the image you want Press OK Press Insert 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 a letter if it comes to you 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. 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! WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS 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. Don't send spam. Happy mailing! Evolution lets you handle your IMAP and newsgroup subscriptions with the same tool: the subscriptions manager. In the Store section, click on the folder to which you wish to subscribe. Click Subscribe to add it to the subscribed list. Close the window. Encryption is an ancient method of keeping information safe from prying eyes. Evolution can help you keep your private messages secret. To do that, it makes use of the external application gpg, an implementation of strong Public Key Encryption . GPG uses two keys: public and private. You can give your public key to anyone from whom you want to recieve encrypted messages, or put it on a public key server so that people can look it up before contacting you. Never give your private key to anyone, ever. Your private key lets you decrypt any message encrypted with your public key. Using encryption takes a bit of forethought. When you send a message that is encrypted, you must encrypt it using your intended recipient's public key. To get an encrypted message, you must make sure that the sender has your public key in advance. You can use encryption in two different ways: Encrypt the entire message, so that nobody but the recipient can read it. Attach an encrypted signature to a plain text message, so that the recipient can read the message without decrypting it, and only needs decryption to verify the sender's identity. Kevin wants to send an encrypted message to his friend Rachel. He looks up her public key on a general key server, and then tells Evolution to encrypt the message. The message now reads "@#$23ui7yr87#@!48970fsd." When the information gets to Rachel, she decrypts it using her private key, and it appears as plain text for her to read. Before you can get or send encrypted mail, you need to generate your public and private keys with GPG. Here's how: This manual covers version 1.0.6 of GPG. If your version is different, this may not be entirely accurate. You may find out your version number by typing in: gpg --version. Open a terminal and type gpg --gen-key. Choose the default algorythm, "DSA and ElGamal." Choose a key length. The default, 1024 bits, should be long enough. Decide if you want your key to expire automatically, and if so, when. Enter your name, email address, and any additional personal information you think is appropriate. Do not falsify this information, because it will be needed to verify your identity later on. Next, enter your passphrase. It does not have to be the same as your email password or your login password. In fact, it probably shouldn't. Don't forget it. If you lose it, your keys will be useless and you will be unable to decrypt messages sent to you with those keys. Now, GPG will generate your keys. This may take awhile, so feel free to do something else while it's happening. In fact, using your computer for something else actually helps to generate better keys, because it increases the randomness in the key generation seeds. Once the keys are generated, you can view your key information by typing gpg --list-keys. You should see something similar to this: /home/you/.gnupg/pubring.gpg ---------------------------- pub 1024D/32j38dk2 2001-06-20 you <you@your-address.com> sub 1024g/289sklj3 2001-06-20 [expires: 2002-11-14] GPG will create one list, or keyring, for your public keys and one for your private keys. All the public keys you know are stored in the file ~/.gnupg/pubring.gpg. If you want to give other people your key, send them that file. If you wish, you can upload your keys to a keyserver. Here's how: Check your public key ID with gpg --list-keys. It will be the string after 1024D on the line beginning with "pub." In this example, it's 32j38dk2. Enter the command gpg --send-keys --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net 32j38dk2. Substitute your key ID for 32j38dk2. You will need your password to do this. Keyservers store your public keys for you so that your friends can decrypt your messages. If you choose not to use a keyserver, you can manually send your people public key, include it in your signature file, or put it on your own web page. However, it's easier to publish them once, and then let people download them from the keyserver when they want. To encrypt a message to your someone else you'll need to use their public key in combination with your private key. Evolution does that for you, but you still need to get their key and add it to your keyring. To get public keys from a public key server, enter the command: gpg --recv-keys --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net keyid , substituting "keyid" for your recipient's ID. You will need to type in your password, and then their ID will automatically be added to your keyring. When you send mail to them, Evolution will allow you to encrypt your messages. If someone sends you their public key directly, save it as a plain text file and enter the command gpg filename. This will add it to your keyring. You'll need to open Tools Mail Settings Once there, select the account with which you'd like to send and recieve encrypted mail, and click the Edit button. In the Security tab is a section labeled Pretty Good Privacy. Enter your key ID and click OK. Your key is now integrated into your identity in Evolution. As you know, you can use encryption to hide the entire message, or just to verify your signature. Once you've generated your public and private keys, and have the public keys of the people to whom you want to send mail, here's what to do: To sign a message, choose: Security PGP Sign . You will be prompted for your PGP password. Once you enter it, click OK and your message will be signed. Encrypting a message is very similar to signing a message. Just choose the menu item Security PGP Encrypt If you get an encrypted message, you will need to decrypt it before you read it. Remember, the sender has to have your public key before they can send you an encrypted message. When you view the message, Evolution will ask you for your PGP password. Enter it, and the message will be displayed properly.