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 Virtual Folders, 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. 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. The Identity window is the first of four steps in the assistant. The identity step will ask you to enter your basic personal information. You can define multiple identities later on with the Tools Mail Settings tool. 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. The Recieving Email step lets you configure receving email people have sent you. 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. IMAP: Keeps the email on your server so you can access your email from multiple systems. Unix mail spool file: If you run a mail server on your desktop computer, choose this option. Standard Unix .mbox file: If you want Ximian Evolution to read mail from a specific file, or if you download mail with another application, choose this option. Qmail maildir format files: If you download your mail using qmail, you'll want to use this. None: Select this if you do not plan to check mail with this account. For IMAP mail servers, your sysadmin may provide you with a specific namespace, the path on the IMAP server where you check for mail. 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 . Email Server: This is the address of the server you're downloading from. Username: The username that you login to your email. That is often the part before the @ in your email. Authentication Type: Chances are you are using Password. Ask your administrator for more details. You can have Ximian Evolution make sure you've chosen correctly by clicking Check for supported types. Remember Password: If you prefer to not enter your password every time you check email, press this button. Ximian Evolution can work with the Microsoft Exchange server over standard protocols such as POP or IMAP. Check with your system administrator to see if you can get POP or IMAP access to your email server. 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: Downloads mail into your mailbox file. Sendmail: Uses another program to download your mail to your mailbox files. Host: If you chose SMTP, 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: Chances are you are using 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. Remember Password: If you prefer to not enter your password every time you check email, press this button. 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 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. 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 calendar, iCal, and for the address book, vCards in a .db3 database. 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

Menubar 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. 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 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. 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. 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 File New Folder Shift Ctrl E . 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. Ximian Evolution lets you nest folders inside of each other, so that you can have a detailed organizational system. 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'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 preferences go here. For mail, that means things like Mail Configuration 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. 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.

Weather 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 Tools Summary Settings . 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 recieve 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:

Inbox

Email 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 . 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 Contact Manager Window

Appointment 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 . 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 grey column dividers. The address book looks like this:

Ximian Evolution Contact List Window

Contact List The Contact List lists your contacts. For detailed instructions on how to use the address book, read .