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. It 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 appointment or contact information 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. To start Ximian Evolution, do either of the following: Select Programs Evolution from your menu panel. Type evolution at the command line. Evolution has a number of command-line options that you may wish to make use of. You can find the full list by running the commands man evolution or evolution --help. The most important ones are: To start Evolution in offline mode: evolution --offline To start Evolution and begin composing a message to the email address you name: evolution mailto:joe@somewhere.net To make your web browser use Evolution as the default email client, enter evolution "%s" as the email handler in your web browser or in the GNOME Control Center. 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. Later on, if you want to change the account you are creating, or if you want to create a new one,select Tools Configure , and click the Mail Accounts button. Then, select the account you want to change and click Edit, or click Add to add a new account. See for details. 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 Tools Settings tool and clicking the Mail Accounts button. Full Name: Your full name (Example: John Doe). Email Address: Your email address (Example: john@doe.com) Reply-To: If you want to have replies sent to another email address, enter it here (optional). Organization: The company where you work, or the organization you represent when you send email (optional). 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: GroupWise: Select this option if you use a GroupWise server. GroupWise keeps mail, calendar, and contact information on the server. 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 or 2003 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. POP: Downloads your email to your hard disk for permanent storage. 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. MH format mail directories: If you download your mail using mh or another MH-style program, you'll want to use this option. You'll need to provide the path to the mail directory 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. Standard Unix mbox spool or directory: 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. 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. If you have purchased 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. Once you have selected a mail delivery mechanism, you may set some preferences for its behavior: 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. Global Address List/Active Directory: Enter the name of your global catalog server here. You may also choose to limit the server's responses and 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. Mailbox Name: If your active directory user name is different from your Exchange mailbox name, enter the mailbox name here. Outlook Web Access (OWA) 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," enter the appropriate value here. Public Folder Server: Enter the name of your organization's public folder server, if any, here. Apply filters to new messages in Inbox on this server: Check this box to use filters when you visit the Inbox for this account. 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. 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 . 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 using an outbound mail server. This is the most common choice for sending mail. 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. Groupwise: Sends mail through your GroupWise server. 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. If you choose SMTP, there are a few additional items to enter: Host: enter your mail sending 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. This is a very short section. You can pick two things: the name for the account, and whether it is the default account. The name you choose for the account is used for display within Evolution, and is not sent with any emails. The suggested name is your email address, but you can use other words or phrases, like "Work," "Personal" or "First Account" if you like. If you check the box next to the label Make this my default account, Evolution will assume that you will send messages from this most often, and will set the "From" selector to this account whenever you open a new message. Only one account can be the default. If you have not done so already, you may also be asked to choose a time zone. 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 contact 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 or contact application. Failing that, export to CSV format and use the csv2vcard utility before importing. 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 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, see the instructions in 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. 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 the calendar, iCal, and for the contacts, a database that exports to vCards. 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. mutt 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 relatively simple. By default, mutt uses the mbox file format. Open Ximian Evolution Click File Import or press Ctrl I . 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. 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 File Import or press Ctrl I . 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. 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.

Inbox

Menu Bar The menu bar 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 switch between folders and between Evolution tools. At the bottom of the shortcut bar there are buttons that let you switch tools, and above that, all the available folders for the current tool. 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. The Online/Offline indicator is here, too, in the lower left of the window. Search Tool The Search Tool lets you search through your email with precision so you can easily find what you're looking for. Ximian 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 buttons with names like Mail and Contacts are the shortcuts. Above them is a list of folders for the current Evolution tool. The folder list organizes your mail, calendars, contact lists, and task lists in a tree, similar to a file tree. Most people will find one to four folders at the base of the tree, depending on the tool and their system configuration. Each Evolution tool will have at least one, called On This Computer, for local information. For example, the folder list for the email tool will show any remote mail storage you have set up, plus local folders and vFolders, or virtual folders, discussed in . If you get large volumes of mail, you'll want more folders than just your Inbox; you can also create multiple calendar, task, or contacts folders. To create a new folder: Right click on the list of folders, and select New Folder. Enter the name of the folder in the Folder Name field. Choose the location of the new folder. Ximian Evolution lets you nest folders inside of each other, so that you can have a detailed organizational system. 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: Copy, to copy the folder to another place. When you select this item, Evolution offers a choice of locations to copy to. Move, to move the folder to another location. Delete, to delete the folder and all its contents. New Folder, to create another folder in the same location. Rename, to change its name. Delete, to delete the folder. Properties, which lets you check the number of total and unread messages in a folder, and, for remote folders, lets you decide whether to copy the folder to your local system for offline operation. 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'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: For all components of Evolution, you can access the settings and configuration options in the tools menu. You can also find things like filter settings and the Virtual Folder editor. Search: Select menu items here to search for messages, or for phrases within a message. You can also see previous searches you have made. In addition to the Search menu, there is a text entry box in the toolbar that you can use to search for messages. Help: Select among these items to open 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. Ximian 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, and local mbox or 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. The junk mail, message filtering and searching functions were built for speed and efficiency on large volumes of mail. There's also the 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:

Inbox

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. Email Viewer This is where your email is displayed. 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 Actions 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 . To begin using the calendar, click the Calendar button in 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 Contact Manager Window

Appointment List The appointment list displays all your scheduled appointments. Task List Tasks are distinct from appointments in that they generally don't have times associated with them. You can see a larger view of your task list by clicking the Tasks button in the shortcut bar. Month Pane The month pane is a small view of a calendar month. To display additional months, drag the column border to the left. You can also select a range of days in the month pane to get a custom range of days displayed in the appointment list. For more information about the calendar read . The Ximian Evolution contacts tool can handle all of the functions of an address book, phone book, or Rolodex. Of course, it's a lot easier to update 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 contacts tool is its integration with the rest of the application. For example, you can right-click on an email address in Evolution mail to create a contact entry instantly. To use the contacts tool, click the Contacts button in the shortcut bar. shows the address book in all its organizational glory. By default, the display shows all your contacts 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 contacts tool looks like this:

Ximian Evolution Contact List Window

Contact List The largest section of the contacts display shows a list of individual contacts. You can also search through the contacts in the same way that you search email folders, with the search tool on the right side of the toolbar. Alphanumeric Shortcuts Click one of the buttons along the right side of the window to view contacts that begin with the letter or number you click. For detailed instructions on how to use the address book, read .