Getting Started with Ximian EvolutionWhat is Ximian Evolution, and What Can It Do for Me?
Information is useless unless it's organized and accessible;
it's hardly even worth the name if you can't look at it and be
informed. The goal of
Ximian Evolution is to make the
tasks of storing, organizing, and retrieving your personal
information easier, so you can work and communicate with
others. That is, it's a highly evolved groupware program, an integral
part of the Internet-connected desktop.
In other words, Ximian Evolution is
a tool to help you get your work done.
Ximian Evolution is Free Software. The
program and its source code are released under the terms of
the GNU General Public License
(GPL), and the documentation falls under
the Free
Documentation License (FDL). For more
information about the GPL and the FDL, visit the Free Software
Foundation's website at http://www.fsf.org.
Ximian Evolution can help you work in a
group by handling email, address and other contact
information, and one or more calendars. It can do that on one
or several computers, connected directly or over a network,
for one person or for large groups.
With Ximian Evolution, you can
accomplish your most common daily tasks faster. For example, it
takes only one or two clicks to enter an appointment or an
address card sent to you by email, or to send email to a contact
or appointment. Ximian Evolution
makes displays faster and more efficient, so searches are faster
and memory usage is lower. People who get lots of mail will
appreciate advanced features like VFolders,
which let you save searches as though they were ordinary mail
folders.
The First Time you Start Ximian Evolution
To start Ximian Evolution, do either
of the following:
Select ProgramsEvolution from your
menu panel.
Type evolution at the command line.
The first time you run the program, it will create a directory
called evolution in your home directory,
where it will store all of its local data. Then, it will open a
first-run assistant to help you set up mail accounts and import
data from other applications.
Using the first-run assistant will take approximately two to
five minutes.
Defining Your Identity
The Identity window is the first step in the assistant. Here,
you will enter some basic personal information. You can
define multiple identities later on with the
ToolsConfigure tool and
clicking the Mail Accounts button.
Full Name: Your full name (Example: John Doe).
Email Address: Your email address (Example: john@doe.com)
Organization: The company where you work (optional).
Signature file: If you'd like to use an email
signature,
select your signature file here. Normally, the
signature will be the contents of the
.signature file in your home
directory.
Receiving Email
The Receiving Email lets you determine
which you will get your email.
Server Type: There are numerous types of servers
from which Ximian Evolution
can fetch your mail. Ask your system administrator if
you're not sure which of the following are available to
you:
POP: Downloads your email to your hard disk for
permanent storage.
Microsoft Exchange: Available only if you have
purchased the Ximian Connector for Microsoft
Exchange, this will allow you to connect to a
Microsoft Exchange 2000 server, which stores
email, calendar, and contact information on the
server.
IMAP: Keeps the email on your server so you can
access your email from multiple systems.
Standard Unix mbox spools: If you want to read and
store mail in the mail spool on your local system,
choose this option. You'll need to provide the
path to the mail spool you want to use.
Maildir format mail directories: If you download
your mail using qmail or another maildir-style
program, you'll want to use this option. You'll need
to provide the path to the mail directory you want to
use.
Local Delivery: Choose this option if you want to
move mail from the spool and store it in your home
directory. If you would rather leave mail in your
system's spool files, choose the
Standard Unix mbox
spools option instead. You'll need
to provide the path to the mail spool you want to
use.
None: Select this if you do not plan to
check mail with this account.
If you selected POP, Microsoft Exchange, or IMAP as your mail
server, you'll need to enter some more information:
The host name of your mail server. Ask
your system administrator if you're not
sure.The username for the account on that
system. Whether you want to use a secure (SSL)
connection. If your server supports it, it's
best to enable this security option.
The authentication options supported by
your server. If you're not sure, click the
Check for supported types
button or ask your system administrator.
Whether you'd like Evolution to remember
your password.
Can Ximian Evolution Talk to Microsoft Exchange?
If you have purchased the Ximian Connector for Microsoft
Exchange, you can access Microsoft Exchange 2000 servers
natively. If you do not have the Connector, or if you use
an older version of Microsoft Exchange, talk to your system
administrator about access to standard protocol services
like POP and IMAP.
More Mail Configuration Options
There are more extensive options for mail preferences,
especially if you've chosen POP, Microsoft Exchange, or IMAP
as incoming mail server type. If you want to set these
options after you've created the account, you can select
ToolsConfigure
, click the Mail
Accounts button. Then, select the account you want
to change and click Edit. See for details.
If you chose POP mail:Checking for new mail: If you would like
Evolution to check for new mail
automatically, check the box and select a frequency in
minutes.
Message Storage: If you'd like to store copies of your
mail on the server, check this option.
If you chose Microsoft Exchange:Checking for new mail: If you would like
Evolution to check for new mail
automatically, check the box and select a frequency in
minutes.
Mailbox Name is Different from Login Name: If your active directory user name
is different from your Exchange mailbox name, check this
box and enter your mailbox name here.
Override Outlook Web Access Path: In most cases,
the URL for web access is
"http://server.company.com/exchange." If your
system has a path that is not "exchange," check
the box and enter the custom path here.
Create a Global Address List folder: If you want to
use your organization's Active Directory or Global Address
List, leave this box checked.
Active Directory Server Name: Enter the Active Directory
server name here.
Limit number of Responses: Select a maximum number
of results for an address search. A maximum number of
results limits the load on your system and on your network.
If you chose IMAP:Checking for new mail: If you would like
Evolution to check for new mail
automatically, check the box and select a frequency in
minutes.
If you want Evolution
to check for new messages in all your
IMAP folders, make sure the Check for new
messages in all folders box is selected.Show only subscribed folders: Check this box if you
have more folders in your IMAP view than you want to
read.
Override server-supplied namespace: If you like, enter a
specific directory where your server stores mail for
you. Typical values are "mail" and "Mail." For more
information about how to use IMAP mail, see .Apply filters to new messages in INBOX on this
server: If you'd like your filters to work on this account
as well as on locally downloaded mail, check this box.What's an IMAP Namespace?
For IMAP mail servers, your sysadmin may provide
you with a specific namespace, the directory on
where your server stores mail for you. If you
check your IMAP mail and your folder list includes
files that don't look like mail folders, you
probably need to change your mail
namespace. Typical values are "mail" and "Mail."
If you prefer, you can choose to subscribe to
individual mail folders one at a time. For more
information about how to use IMAP mail, see .
Sending Email
The Sending Email step lets you configure sending
email.
Server Type: There are numerous server types that
Ximian Evolution supports for sending your
mail.
SMTP: Sends mail directly from your system.
Microsoft Exchange: Sends mail through a Microsoft
Exchange server using the Microsoft Exchange 2000
protocol. Available only if you have are using the
Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange. You must
have a valid license key purchased from store.ximian.com.
Sendmail: Uses the Sendmail program to send mail
from your system. Sendmail is more flexible, but
is not as easy to configure, so you should only
select this option if you know how to set up a
Sendmail service.
Host: If you chose SMTP or
Microsoft Exchange, enter the
server's name or IP address here.
Server requires authentication: If your server
requires you to enter a password to send mail, check
this box.
Authentication Type: Unless you've been told otherwise,
your best bet is to leave this set at
Password. If you're not sure, ask
your system administrator or ISP, or have
Ximian Evolution check for
you by clicking Check for supported
types.
Username: The account name you use when you login to
check your email. Normally, this is the part of your
email address before the '@' character. For Exchange
servers, it is the username you would use to log in to a
Windows workstation at your company.
Remember Password: If you prefer to not enter
your password every time you check email, press this
button.
Importing Mail (Optional)
If Ximian Evolution finds mail or
address files from another application, it will offer to
import them. If you're not sure which file format your mail
program uses, ask your system administrator. If you want, you
can skip this step and return to it at a later time by
selecting
FileImport.
Ximian Evolution can import the following types of
files:
VCard (.vcf, gcrd):
The addressbook format used by the GNOME, KDE, and
many other contact management applications. You
should be able to export to VCard format from any
address book application.
Microsoft Outlook Express 4 (.mbx):
Email file format used by Microsoft Outlook Express
4. For other versions of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, see
the workaround described in the note below.
MBox (mbox):
The email box format used by Mozilla, Netscape,
Ximian Evolution, Eudora, and many other email clients.
Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express Users
Microsoft Outlook, and versions of Outlook Express after
version 4, use proprietary formats that Ximian
Evolution cannot read or import. For contacts,
you may have to email them to yourself and import them that
way. For email, there is a simpler workaround:
While using Windows, import the files into Mozilla Mail (or
another mailer, such as Netscape or Eudora, that uses the
standard mbox format).
Copy the files to the system or partition you use for
Ximian Evolution.
Use the Ximian Evolution import
tool to import the files. There's more information about
why this works, and how, at the Ximian support website.Netscape Users
Before importing mail from Netscape, make sure you select
FileCompact All
Folders. If you don't,
Ximian Evolution will import and undelete
the messages in your Trash folders.
Exporting Files From Ximian Evolution
Ximian Evolution uses standard file types for all its information,
so you should have no trouble taking your information
elsewhere if you want.
For mail, that's mbox, for calendar,
iCal, and for the address book, vCards
in a .db3 database.
Importing Mail from Individual Mail Clients
Chances are, you already have your email in another mail program
and don't want to lose the information. The following section
describes how to import mail from specific mail clients.
Importing Mail from muttmutt is a text-based mail client
which is shipped with many Linux and Unix distributions.
mutt uses the standard mbox,
maildir, and MH file formats, which makes importing your mail
into Evolution easy. By default,
mutt uses the mbox file format.
Open Ximian Evolution
Click
FileImport
or press
CtrlI.
Click Next.
Select Import a Single File
Click Browse and select the file
you would like to import from. By default, your email
is stored in ~/mbox for the mbox
format and ~/Maildir for the Maildir format.
When prompted for what folder in
Evolution to import to,
select a folder. You can also create a new folder and
drop it in there.
Importing Mail from KMail
KMail is the mail client which is shipped with the KDE desktop
environment. KMail uses the standard mbox file format, which
means that importing your mail into
Evolution is easy.
Open Ximian Evolution
Click
FileImport
or press
CtrlI.
Click Next.
Select Import a Single File
Click Browse and select the file
you would like to import from. By default, KMail stores
its information in the Mail directory of your home
directory.
When prompted for what folder in
Evolution to import to,
select a folder. You can also create a new folder and
drop it in there.
What's What in Ximian Evolution
Now that you've gotten the first-run configuration out of the
way, you're ready to get down to work. Here's a quick
explanation of what's going on in your main
Ximian Evolution window.
The Ximian Evolution Main WindowInboxMenubar
The Menubar gives you access to nearly all the
features that can be found in Ximian Evolution.
Toolbar
The Toolbar gives you fast and easy access to the
most used features in each component.
Shortcut Bar
The Shortcut Bar lets you go to your favorite
components with the click of a click of a button.
Status Bar
Periodically, Ximian Evolution will need to quietly
display a message, or tell you the progress of a task. This most
often happens when you're checking or sending email. These progress
queues are shown here, in the Status Bar.
Search Tool
The Search Tool lets you search through your email
with precision so you can easily find what you're looking for.
The Shortcut BarXimian Evolution's most important job is
to give you access to your information and help you use it
quickly. One way it does that is through the
shortcut bar, the column on the left
hand side of the main window. The large buttons with names
like Inbox and
Contacts are the shortcuts, and you can
select different groups of shortcuts by clicking the
rectangular group buttons.
Take a look at the Shortcut Bar
The shortcut buttons in that category are:
Summary:
Start your day here. The Ximian Evolution
Summary gives you a quick
summary of new or important messages, daily
appointments and urgent tasks. You can customize
its appearance and content, and use it to access
Ximian Evolution services.
Inbox:
Click the Inbox button to start
reading your mail. Your Inbox is also where you can
access Ximian Evolution's tools to filter, sort, organize, and
search your mail.
Calendar:
The Calendar can store your appointments and task lists
for you. Connected to a network, you can use it to keep
a group of people on schedule and up to date.
Tasks:
A full-size view of your calendar's task pad.
Contacts:
The Addressbook holds contacts, with address, phone, and
other personal information. Like calendar information,
contact data can be synchronized with hand-held devices
and shared over a network.
Folders and The Folder Bar
The folder bar is a more comprehensive
way to view the information you've stored with
Ximian Evolution. It displays all your
appointments, address cards, and email in a tree that's a lot
like a file
tree-- it starts small at the top, and branches
downwards. On most computers, there will be three or four
folders at the base. First, of course, is the
Summary, a customizable summary of your
information. Below that are your Local
Folders, which hold all the
Ximian Evolution data that's stored on your
computer. After that are your network servers: LDAP servers that host shared contact
directories, and IMAP mail
folders to which you subscribe. Lastly, there are
vFolders, or virtual folders, discussed in
,
A typical Local folder contains the following folders:
Calendar, for appointments and
event listings.
Contacts, for address cards.
Drafts, for messages you started and didn't finish.
Inbox, for incoming mail.
Outbox, for messages you have written
but not yet sent. This will be empty unless you use
Ximian Evolution while offline.
Sent, for sent mail.
Trash, a vFolder view of all the
messages you have marked for deletion but not yet
expunged.
Navigating without the Folder Bar or the Shortcut Bar
You don't need the folder bar or the shortcut bar to move
around the main window. You can use the Tab
key to switch from one part of the window to another. When
you hide the folder bar, there is a menu on the left side of
the window just below the toolbar to move about the folder
tree, even with the folder and shortcut bars hidden.
If you get large volumes of mail, you'll want more folders than
just your Inbox. To create a new folder:
Select
FileNewFolderShiftCtrlE.
Select the name of the folder in the Folder
Name field.
Select the folder type. The available options are.
Calendar
Contacts
Mail
Tasks
Choose the location of the new folder.
SubfoldersXimian Evolution lets you nest folders
inside of each other, so that you can have a detailed
organizational system.
Folders Have Limits
Calendars must go in calendar folders, mail in mail
folders, and contacts in contact folders.
Right-clicking will bring up a menu for just about anything in
Ximian Evolution. If you right-click on a
folder, you'll have a menu with the following options:
View, to view the folder. Open in New Window to view the folder in another window. Move, to move the folder to another location. Copy, to duplicate the folder. Delete, to delete the folder and all its contents. Rename, to change its name. Create New Folder, to create another folder in the same location. Add to Shortcut Bar, to add the folder to your shortcut bar. Properties, to view or change the folder properties.
You can also rearrange folders and messages by dragging and
dropping them.
Any time new mail arrives in a mail folder, that folder
label is displayed in bold text, along with the number of
new messages in that folder.
The Menu Bar
The menu bar's contents will always
provide all the possible actions for any given view of your
data. If you're looking at your Inbox, most of the menu items
will relate to mail; some will relate to other components of
Ximian Evolution and some, especially those
in the File Menu will relate to the
application as a whole.
File: Anything related to a file or to the
operations of the application generally falls under this
menu: creating things, saving them to disk, printing them,
and quitting the program itself. Edit:
The Edit menu holds
useful tools that help you edit text and move it around.
View:
This menu lets you decide how Ximian Evolution
should look. Some of the features control the appearance of
Ximian Evolution as a whole, and others
the way a particular kind of information appears.
Actions:
Holds actions which maybe applied to a message. Normally,
if there is only one target for the action -- for
example, replying to a message -- you can find it in
the Actions menu.
Tools:
Tools for configuring, changing, and
setting up go here. For mail, that means things like
and the
Virtual Folder Editor. For the
Calendar and the Contact
Manager, it's color, network, and layout
configuration.
Help:
Select among these items to open the
Help Browser
and read the Ximian Evolution manual.
Once you've familiarized yourself with the main
window you can start doing things with it. We'll
start with the Summary, which provides a
quick overview of your Ximian
Evolution information.
Introducing the Summary
The Ximian Evolution Summary provides you with a quick
run-down of important information: your appointments for a
given day, how much new mail you have, headlines from
selected news services, and so forth. To see the Summary,
click on the Summary button in the
shortcut bar, or select the Summary
folder in the folder bar.
The Evolution SummaryWeather Summary
Shows you the latest weather updates from hundreds of cities around the world.
News Feeds
Displays up to the minute news from your favorite websites.
Mail Summary
Shows you how many email messages you have in your selected folders, waiting to be read.
Calendar Summary
Shows you your calendar.
Tasks
Shows your pending tasks
To add additional services to your Summary, or to edit the
existing services, select
ToolsConfigure and click
the Summary Settings button.
Introducing EmailXimian Evolution email is like other
email programs in several ways:
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 receive multiple file
attachments.
It supports multiple mail sources, including IMAP, POP3, local
mbox and mh
spools and files created by other mail programs.
It lets you guard your privacy with encryption.
However, Ximian Evolution has some
important differences. First, it's built to handle very large
amounts of mail. Both the filtering and
searching
functions were built for speed and efficiency on large volumes
of mail. There's also the Ximian Evolution
vFolder,
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.
Here's what the mailer looks like:
Ximian Evolution MailInboxEmail
Viewer
This is where your email is displayed.
Message List
The Message List displays all the emails
that you have. This includes all your read, unread, and email
that is flagged to be deleted.
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: you can move,
delete, or undelete them, and create filters or vFolders based
on them.
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.
For an in-depth guide to the email capabilities of Ximian
Evolution, read .
Introducing the Calendar
To begin using the calendar, select
Calendar from the shortcut
bar. By default, the calendar starts showing
today's schedule on a ruled background. At the upper right,
there's a monthly calendar you can use to switch days. Below
that, there's a Task pad, where you can
keep a list of tasks separate from your calendar appointments.
The day view in the calendar looks like this:
Ximian Evolution Calendar ViewXimian Evolution Contact Manager WindowAppointment
List
The Appointment List is responsible for showing you all of
your scheduled appointments, whether they are all day appointments or simply one time
appointments that last a half an hour.
Task List
The Task List compliments the
Appointment List as it keeps track of
tasks which don't have a time associated with them. Tasks can
have complex notes associated with them, and you can also note
their completeness on a percentage scale.
Calendar Window
The Calendar Window has a graphical representation of
the calendar, so you can select what days to view in the Appointment
List.
For more information about the calendar
read .
Introducing the Address Book
The Ximian Evolution address book
can handle all of the functions of an address book, phone
book, or Rolodex. Of course, it's a lot easier to update
Ximian Evolution than it is to
change an actual paper book. Ximian
Evolution also allows easy synchronization with
hand-held devices and functions with LDAP directories on a network.
Another advantage of the Ximian Evolution
address book is its integration with the rest of the
application. For example, you can create an address card from
an email just by right-clicking on the sender's email address.
To open your address book, click on
Contacts in the shortcut bar, or select
one of your contacts folders from the folder bar. shows the address book in all its
organizational glory. By default, the address book shows all
your cards in alphabetical order, in a minicard view. You can select
other views from the View menu, and adjust
the width of the columns by clicking and dragging the gray
column dividers.
The address book looks like this:
Ximian Evolution Contact InterfaceXimian Evolution Contact List WindowContact
List
The Contact List lists your contacts.
For detailed instructions on how to use the address book,
read .