A User's Guide to Ximian Evolution 1.4
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Composing New Email Messages

You can start writing a new email message by selecting File->New-> Mail Message, or by pressing the New button in the Inbox toolbar. When you do so, the New Message window will open, as shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3. New Message Window

Enter an address in the To: field. If you wish, enter a subject in the Subject:, and a message in the box at the bottom of the window. Once you have written your message, press Send.

Sending Composed Messages Later

Evolution will normally send mail as soon as you click the Send button. However, there are a few ways you can save a message to be sent later:


Working Offline

Offline mode is a tool designed for use with IMAP or Exchange mail accounts in situations where you will not be connected to the network at all times. It will keep a local copy of one or more folders, and allow you to compose messages, storing them in your Outbox to be sent the next time you connect.

While POP mail downloads all messages to your local system, IMAP and Exchange connections usually download just the headers, and fetch the rest only when you want to read the message. Before you go offline, Evolution will download the unread messages from the folders you have chosen to store.

To mark a folder for offline use, select Settings->Preferences and then click the Folders icon. In the Offline Folders tab, click the check-box next to the folders that you would like to use while you are offline.

Your connection status is shown by the small icon in the lower left border of the Evolution main window. When you are online, it will display two connected cables. When you go offline, the cables will separate.

To cache your selected folders and disconnect from the network, select File->Work Offline or click the connection status icon in the lower left of the screen. When you want to reconnect, choose File->Work Online or click the connection status icon again.

More About Mail Composition

In the next few sections, you'll see how Evolution handles advanced email features, including large recipient lists, attachments, and forwarding.

Attachments

To attach a file to your email:

  1. Push the attach button in the composer toolbar

  2. Select the file you want to attach

  3. 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.

Specifying Recipients for Email

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 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. If your Bcc: field is absent, click View->Bcc Field.

If you frequently write email to the same groups of people, you can create address lists in the Contact Manager, and then send them mail as though they had a single address. To learn how to do that, read the Section called Creating a List of Contacts in the chapter called Working with Your Contacts.

Tip Setting Reply-to On a Per-Mail Basis
 

Evolution has the ability to let you specify the Reply-To in an email. Using this, you can setup a special Reply-To for an email. To do this:

  1. Open a composer window

  2. Open the Reply-To field by selecting View->Reply To

  3. Enter the address you wish to have be the Reply-To address in the new Reply-To field.

Choosing Recipients Quickly

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.

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 the Section called Send me a Card: Adding New Cards Quickly in the chapter called Working with Your Contacts and the Section called Scheduling With the Evolution Calendar in the chapter called Managing your Schedule.

Replying to Email Messages

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 in grey with a blue line to one side (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 Figure 4.

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Figure 4. Reply Message 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.

Example 1. Using the Reply to All feature

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.

Note What is a Mailing List?
 

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 .
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.

Searching and Replacing with the Composer

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.

Enhance your email with HTML

Normally, you can't set text styles or insert pictures in emails, which is why email is often regarded as uncommunicative and cold, and why people often resort to using far too many exclamation points 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.

Note HTML Mail is not a Default Setting
 

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. Because some people may prefer not to get HTML mail, Evolution sends plain text unless you explicitly ask for HTML.

You can change the format of an email message between plain text and HTML by choosing Format-> HTML.

To send all your mail as HTML by default, set your mail format preferences in the mail configuration dialog. See the Section called Message Composer Preferences in the chapter called Advanced Configuration 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 bullet points for the highly organized.

Tip Using Bullets to Make Your Email More Attractive
 

Instead of using asterisks to mark a bulleted list, try the Bulleted List style from the style dropdown list. Evolution uses more attractive bullets and handles word wrap and multiple levels of indentation.
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. You can select a background color or image by right-clicking on the message background and selecting Page.



The Insert gives you 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. To add a link:

  1. Select the text you wish to link from.

  2. Right click on the text and click on Link.

  3. Put the URL you want to use in the URL field.

  4. Click OK.



Note

If you're typing a web page address to be automatically formatted, keep in mind that a space terminates the link.
Insert Image

Lets you put an image alongside text.

To insert an image into your email:

  1. Make sure that you have the Format->HTML selector checked.

  2. Click the Insert Image button in the toolbar, or select Insert->Image.

  3. Choose your image by clicking the Browse button.

  4. Press Insert to insert the image.



Insert Rule

Inserts a horizontal line into the text to help divide two sections.

To insert a rule:

  1. Make sure that you have the Format->HTML selector checked.

  2. Click the Rule button in the Toolbar.

  3. Select the type of rule. You can use a plain line, a 3D line, or a yellow line with flowers.

  4. Choose the size of the line, as a percentage of the width of the email window.

  5. Choose the alignment and style. For the plain line, you can choose the thickness of the line, and whether it will be shaded, or solid. For the other types, you can only choose alignment.

  6. Click Insert to insert the rule.



Insert Table

Inserts a table into the text to help divide two sections.

To insert a table:

  1. Make sure that you have the Format->HTML selector checked.

  2. Click the Table button in the Toolbar.

  3. Select the table Template you wish to use. Each has a slightly different feel and layout.

  4. If you so desire, you may change the number of rows, columns, spacing of each cell, and so forth.

  5. Click the Insert button.



Once the table is in place, you can right-click on it and get a list of ways to alter it, such as changing its background color, expanding it, or deleting a row or cell.

Templates

Evolution not only allows you to decorate your email with HTML text and graphics, but provides you with prebuilt templates for you to use when making these improvements. You can use these to emphasize a point or frame an image in an attractive manner.

To include a template into your HTML based email:

  1. Make sure that the Format -> HTML selector is checked.

  2. Click the HTML Template button in the Toolbar or select Insert -> HTML Template

  3. Select the template type in the Template selection box. Your options are Note and Image Frame.

  4. Set the size and alignment of the HTML template.

  5. Click Insert to insert it where the cursor is.

  6. Click on the text in the template, and enter the text you want to use.

    If you have selected an image frame template, right-click on the image and select Image to select the image you want to place in the frame.




Forwarding Mail

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, select Actions->Forward, or press Ctrl+J. If you prefer to forward the message inline instead of attached, select Actions->Forward Inline from the menu. Choose an addressee as you would when sending a new message; the subject will already be entered, although you can alter it if you wish. Enter your comments on the message in the composition frame, and press Send.

Seven Tips for Email Courtesy

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