Evolution email is like other email programs in all the ways you would hope: It can sort and organize your mail in a wide variety of ways with folders, searches, and filters. It can send and receive mail in HTML or as plain text, and supports file attachments. It supports multiple mail sources, including IMAP, POP3, and local mbox files. 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 mail volumes. There's also the Evolution vFolder, an advanced organizational feature not found in other mail clients. If you get a lot of mail, or if you keep every message you get in case you need to refer to it later, you'll find that feature especially useful. You can start reading email by clicking Inbox in the shortcut bar. By default, the Inbox is open when you start Evolution, and the first time you see your inbox, there's a message in it from Helix Code welcoming you to the application. The first time you open your Evolution Inbox, you will see a window like the one in , with a message from Helix Code in the message list. The message is displayed below that, in the view pane. If you find the view pane too small, you can double-click on the message in the message list to have it open in a new window. As is the case with folders, you can right-click on messages in the message list and get a menu of possible actions. Go ahead and click on the message in the message list. That selects the message. Then click on the Delete button in the tool bar. The message now has a line through it, because you've marked it for deletion. If you really want to get rid of it, choose Expunge from the Tools menu. That will delete it permanently. If you want to keep it, click Delete again, and it will no longer be marked as deleted. At some point in the future, this feature will change to something a little less counter-intuitive.

Inbox

To check your email, just click Get mail in the toolbar. If this is the first time you've done so, the mail setup assistant will ask you for the information it needs to check your mail (see for more information). If you're checking mail over a network (instead of from local mbox files), you'll need to enter your email password. Type it in, click OK and Evolution will download your mail. New mail will appear in your Inbox. Once you've entered your password, Evolution will hold it in memory so that you don't have to retype it every time you want to check mail. It will only remember the password until you quit the application; each time you run Evolution, you need to re-enter your password. If you'd like Evolution to forget your password sooner, select ToolsForget Passwords, and it will do so immediately. If you get an error message instead of mail, you probably need to change your network settings. To learn how to do that, have a look at , or ask your system administrator. If someone sends you a file attached to an email (an "attachment"), Evolution will display the file at the bottom of the message to which it's attached. Text, HTML, and most images will be displayed in the message itself. For other files, Evolution will provide a link and icon at the end of the message. Click on that, and Evolution will ask you where you want to put the file. Once you've chosen a location and saved the file, you can open, move, copy, or execute it just like any other, using Nautilus or your favorite shell or file manager. Evolution can also display HTML-formatted mail, complete with graphics. HTML formatting will display automatically, although you can turn it off if you prefer. You can start writing a new email message by selecting File New Mail, 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, a subject in the Subject: and a message in the big empty box at the bottom of the window, and press Send. That's easy. It may even be too easy, which is why I like to queue my messages up to be sent a few minutes later. Evolution will send mail immediately unless you tell it to do otherwise by selecting Send Later from the MENU in the message composition window. Then, when you press Send, all your unsent messages will go out at once. I like to use "Send Later" because it gives me a chance to change my mind about a message before it goes out. That way, I don't send anything I'll regret the next day. To learn more about how you can specify message queue and filter behavior, see . You can probably guess the purpose of the buttons labelled Cut, Copy, Paste and Undo, but there's a bit more to sending mail that's less obvious. In the next few sections, you'll see how Evolution handles additional features, including mailing lists, attachments, and forwarding. If you have created address cards in the contact manager, you can also enter nicknames or other portions of address data, and Evolution will complete the address for you. 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. Alternately, you can click on the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: buttons to get a list of email addresses. Click the check-boxes next to the addresses, then click OK, and the address will be added to the appropriate form field. For more information about using email together with the contact manager and the calendar, see and . In addition, you can mark recipients in three different ways. The To: field is for the primary recipients of the message you are going to send. However, it is considered bad form to have more than a few email addresses in this section. If you're writing to one person, but want to keep a third party up to date, you can use Cc:. Hearkening back to the dark ages when people used typewriters and there were no copy machines, "Cc" stands for "Carbon Copy." Use it whenever you want to share a message you've written to someone else. Say, for example, Susan sends an email to a client. She puts her co-worker, Tim, in the in the Cc: field, so that he know what's going on. The client can see that Tim also received the message, and knows that he can talk to Tim about the message as well. If you have a large number of recipients, or if you want to send mail to several people without sharing the recipient list, you should use Bcc:. "Bcc" stands for "Blind Carbon Copy", and means that people you put in the Bcc: field get the message, but nobody else sees their email address. They will still see the list of addresses from the To: and Cc: fields, though. 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. Don't assume it won't happen to you! In order to reply to a message, click on it once in the message list to select it. Then press the Reply button. A window like the New Message window will appear, but the subject will already be present— the same subject as the message to which you are replying, but with Re: before it, to mark it as a reply. In addition, the full text of the previous message is inserted into the new message, either in italics (for HTML display) or with the > character (in plain text mode) before each line. This indicates quoting. You can intersperse your message with the quoted material as shown in

Evolution Main Window

If a message has several recipients, as in the case of mailing lists or messages that have been carbon copied, you may wish to click 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. But be careful, and always make sure you know who is getting a message: it could be a mailing list with thousands of subscribers. 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 to all of them, he uses Reply to All, but if he just wants to tell Susan that he agrees with her, he uses Reply. You can't normally use text treatments or pictures in emails, which is why you've probably seen people use asterisks for emphasis or use emoticons to convey their feelings. However, most of the newer email programs can include and display images and text treatments as well as basic alignment and paragraph formatting. 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 Send Messages as HTML in the mail settings dialog box. See for more information. If you format a message with HTML, but do not have Send Messages as HTML enabled in your mail settings, the composer will remove your text styles. It will, however, preserve indentation and lists. The same is true for individuals in your address book whom you have not marked as wanting to receive HTML mail. HTML formatting tools are located just above the composition frame, and in the Insert and Format menus. Your message text will appear formatted in the composer window, and the message will be sent as HTML. 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 Choose Normal for a default text style, or Header 1 through Header 6 for varying sizes of header. You can also select pre for preformatted text blocks, and three types of List Item. Text style B is for bold text I for italics U to underline 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 left-justified, the center button, centered, and the right hand button, right-justified. Indentation rules The button with the arrow pointing left will reduce a paragraph's indentation, and the right arrow will increase its indentation. There are three tools that you can find only in the Insert menu. Insert Link: Use this tool to put hyperlinks in your HTML messages. When you select it, Evolution will prompt you for the Text that will appear, and the Link, where you should enter the actual web address (URL). Insert Image: Insert Image: Select this item to embed an image into your email, as was done in the welcome message. Images will appear at the location of the cursor. Insert Rule: This will insert a horizontal line, or rule, into your document. You'll be presented with a dialog box which gives you the choice of size, percentage of screen, shading, and alignment; if you leave everything at the default values you'll get a thin black rule all the way across the screen. 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. If you want to attach a file to your email message, you can drag it from your desktop into the message window, or click the button in the toolbar with a paper clip on it, labelled Attach. If you click the Attach button, Evolution will open a file selection dialog box, to ask you which file you want to send. Select the file and click OK. When you send the message, a copy of the file will go with it. Be aware that big attachments can take a long time to download. The post office forwards your mail for you when you change addresses, and you can forward mail when you get a letter 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. I started with ten, but four were "Don't send spam." 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 email quotation symbols (>) indicating multiple layers of careless inline 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! ALL CAPS MEANS YOU'RE SHOUTING! Never write anything in email you wouldn't say in public. Old messages have a nasty habit of resurfacing when you least expect them to. Check your spelling and use complete sentences. Don't send nasty emails (flames). If you get one, don't write back. When you reply or forward, include just enough of the previous message to provide context: not too much, not too little. Happy mailing! Even if you only get a few email messages a day, you probably want to sort and organize them. When you get a hundred a day and you want to refer to a message you received six weeks ago, you need to sort and organize them. Fortunately, Evolution has the tools to help you do it. Evolution keeps mail, as well as address cards and calendars, in folders. You start out with a few, like Inbox, Outbox, and Drafts, but you can create as many as you like. Create new folders by selecting New and then Folder from the File menu. Evolution will as you for the name and the type of the folder, and will provide you with a folder tree so you can pick where it goes. When you click OK, your new folder will appear in the folder view. You can then put messages in it by dragging and dropping them. If you create a filter with the filter assistant, you can have mail moved to your folder automatically. Most mail clients can search through your messages for you, but Evolution does it faster. You can search through just the message subjects, just the message body, or both body and subject. To start searching, enter a word or phrase in the text area right below the toolbar, and choose a search type: Body or subject contains: This will search message subjects and the messages themselves for the word or phrase you've entered in the search field. Body contains: This will search only in message text, not the subject lines. Subject contains: This will show you messages where the search text is in the subject line. It will not search in the message body. Body does not contain: This finds every email message that does not have the search text in the message body. It will still show messages that have the search text in the subject line, if it is not also in the body. Subject does not contain: This finds every mail whose subject does not contain the search text. Then, press Enter. Evolution will show your search results in the message list. Filters sort your email for you as it arrives. Most often, you'll want to have Evolution put mail into different folders, but you can have it do anything you like. People who subscribe to multiple mailing lists, or who often need to refer to messages they have sent, find filters especially helpful to separate personal from list-related mail, but they're good for anybody who gets more than a few messages a day. To create a filter, select Tools Filter Assistant . This will bring up a window which will guide you through filter creation. The filter assistant is shown in

Creating a new Filter

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

Selecting a vFolder Rule

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