# Advanced Configuration

Perhaps your mail server has changed names. Perhaps you've grown tired of a certain layout for your appointments. Whatever the reason, you want to change your Evolution settings. This chapter will tell you how to do just that.

Evolution 1.2 brings with it a redesigned comprehensive settings window that you can open by choosing Tools Configure, no matter where you are in Evolution. On the left half of the settings window is a column, similar to the Evolution shortcut bar, which lets you choose which portion of Evolution to customize. The right half of the window is where you'll make your actual changes.

## Changing Mail Settings

Changing Mail Settings

There are eight items you can customize. From top to bottom, they are:

Mail Accounts

  Here, add or change information about your email accounts: the servers to which you connect, the way you download mail, your password authentication mode, and so forth. This is the most complex item in the list, and is covered in .

Folder Settings

  Here, you can choose the default folders for various components of Evolution, the folders that will be cached locally when you go to offline mode, and the folders that Evolution will use when it is searching for autocompletion information as you address a mail.

Mail Preferences

  These are overall mail reading preferences: display settings, notification options, security, and so forth. These are covered in .

Composer Preferences

  Settings for the way that you use the mail composer: shortcuts, signatures, spelling, and so forth. One fun feature here is the ability to substitute graphical smiley-faces for "emoticons" such as :) that many people use in email. This tool is covered in .

Calendar and Tasks

  Here, you can set the way the calendar behaves, including your time zone and the length of your work-week.

Directory Servers

  If you want to use a shared directory server (LDAP server), this is the place to set it up.

Font Preferences

  Choose the fonts that Evolution will use to display email here.

Summary Preferences

  Set the mail folders, news feeds, schedule summary length, and weather locations to be displayed here. For news feeds, enter the web address of any RDF file.

## Mail Settings

The first few tools, with the exception of the folder tool, cover mail tasks:

### Working with Mail Accounts

Ximian Evolution allows you to maintain multiple accounts, or identities. This is useful want to keep personal and professional email separate, or if you wear several hats at work. When you are writing an email message, you can which account to use by selecting from the drop-down list next to the From entry in the message composer.

Clicking Get Mail will refresh any IMAP, `mh`, or `mbox` listings and check and download mail from all POP servers. In other words, Get Mail gets your mail, no matter how many sources you have, or what types they are. If you don't want to check mail for a given account, select it in the Accounts tab and click the Disable button.

To add a new account, simply click Add to open the mail configuration assistant. To alter an existing identity, select it in the Preferences window, and then click Edit to open the account editor dialog.

The account editor dialog has six sections:

Identity:

  Here, enter the name, email address, and other identifying information for the account.

Receiving Mail

  Here, select the way you will be getting mail: you may download mail from a server (POP), read and keep it on the server (Microsoft Exchange or IMAP), or read it from files that already exist on your desktop computer. If you use a server, it may permit or require you to use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection. To turn SSL connections on, just click the Use Secure Connection (SSL) button.

  #### Specifying Port Numbers

  Your system administrator may ask you to connect to a specific port on a mail server. To specify which port you use, just type a colon and the port number after the server name. For example, to connect to port 143 on the server smtp.omniport.com, you would enter as `smtp.omniport.com:143` as the server name.

Receiving Options

  Here, decide whether you'd like to check for mail automatically and how often, as well as other message retrieval options.

  If you chose POP:

    - 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.

    - Store Store status headers in Elm/Pine/Mutt format: If you would like to use the X-Status header format used by the mail clients Elm, Pine, and Mutt, select this option. This option is useful if you plan to check your mail with those clients from time to time.

  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.

    - Exchange Server: If your active directory user name is different from your Exchange mail user name, check this box and enter your mail username here.

    - Create a Global Address List folder: If you would like to have a separate folder for the Active Directory's Global Address List, leave this box checked.

    - Active Directory Server Name: In most organizations, the Active Directory server will be different from the Exchange mail server. If so, check the box and 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.

    - Store Store status headers in Elm/Pine/Mutt format: If you would like to use the X-Status header format used by the mail clients Elm, Pine, and Mutt, select this option. This option is useful if you plan to check your mail with those clients from time to time.

Sending Mail

  In this section, you will choose and configure a method for sending mail. You may choose SMTP, Microsoft Exchange (if you have purchased the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange) or sendmail.

Special Folders

  Here, you can decide where this account will store the messages that it has sent, and the messages that you save as drafts.

Security

  In this section, you will set the security options for this account. Enter your PGP Key ID and decide how frequently to encrypt and sign your messages. You can learn more about PGP and encryption in .

### Mail Display Options

In this tab you can decide how you would like Ximian Evolution to display your mail: how to display citations, how long to wait before marking a message as read, and so forth.

This is also where you can decide how you would like Ximian Evolution to handle inline images in HTML mail that you get. There is a detailed discussion of the issues surrounding these options in .

To change the font which Ximian Evolution uses to display mail, do the following:

1. Open the Evolution preferences dialog by selecting Tools Settings .

2. Select the Font Settings portion of the settings dialog.

3. Choose the font and font size you would like to use.

### Message Composer Preferences

There are three whole tabs of settings you can change for the message composer. The General tab covers shortcuts and assorted behavior, and the other two control signatures and spell checking. In the General tab, you can set:

Shortcuts Type

  Choose a keyboard shortcut scheme: do you prefer keyboard shortcuts similar to those of Microsoft Windows, XEmacs, or Emacs?

Default Behavior

  Choose how you will normally forward and reply messages, what character set they will use, whether they will be in HTML, and whether that HTML can contain smiley face images.

Alerts

  There are two optional alerts here:

  Prompt when sending messages with an empty subject

    The composer will warn you if you try to send a message without a subject.

  Prompt when sending messages with only Bcc recipients defined

    The composer will warn you if you try to send a message that has only Bcc recipients. This is important because some mail servers will fail to honor blind carbon copy if you do not have at least one recipient that is visible to all readers.

The signature editor is new for Evolution 1.2. It allows you to create several different signatures in plain text or in HTML, and to specify which of them will be added to emails you create in the message composer. If you prefer to use an alternate signature or none at all, you can select it from the mail composer itself.

In the spell-checking tool, you can set spelling options, including the language or languages you will use. Note that you must install the gnome-spell package, available through Red Carpet, for spell-checking to be available in Evolution. Alternate dictionaries are also available through Red Carpet and are detected automatically if you have installed them.

## Calendar and Task List Settings

The calendar configuration tool has two tabs General and Display, and is illustrated in .

### Calendar Preferences Dialog

Calendar Configuration

The General tab lets you set the following:

Time zone

  The city you're located in, to judge your time zone.

Time format

  You may choose between twelve-hour (AM/PM) and twenty-four hour time formats here by clicking the appropriate radio button.

Work Week

  When does your work day start, and when does it end? In the day and week views, Evolution displays all the hours in the range you select here, even if there are no appointments for those times. Of course, you can still schedule an appointment outside of these hours, and if you do, the display will be extended to show it.

First day of the week

  You can set weeks to start on Sunday or on Monday.

Start of day

  Says what time of the day your weekday starts. This will show all times till the end of the day, regardless of there is an appointment during the time period.

End of day

  Sets the time the day ends at.

Alerts

  If you'd like to be warned before you delete any appointment, or to have a reminder automatically appear for each event, select the check boxes here.

The Display section lets you choose how your appointments and tasks will appear in your calendar.

The display properties you can set are:

Time divisions

  Sets the increments shown on the daily view in the calendar. You can set this to be anywhere from five minutes to an hour, in five minute increments.

Show appointment end times in week and month views

  If there is space, Evolution will show the end times in the week and month views for each appointment.

Compress weekends in month view

  If checked, your weekends will be shown in one box, instead of one for each day in the month view.

Show week numbers in date navigator

  This will show the week numbers next to the respective weeks in the calendar.

Tasks due today

  Configures what color to set your tasks that are due today to.

Overdue tasks

  Choose the color for overdue tasks.

## Managing the Addressbook

Addressbook settings are limited to the usage and configuration of directory servers (LDAP and Exchange). Contact folders for the mailer's autocompletion feature are set in the Folders tool above, and all other addressbook controls are available in the addressbook window itself.

### Adding Directory Servers

To add a new LDAP server to your available contact folders:

1. Select Tools Settings and then click the Directory Servers button in the settings dialog that appears.

2. Click the Add button on the right side to open a Directory Server addition assistant.

3. Enter the information requested by the assistant:

   Server name

     Address of the server where the addressbook is located.

   Login Method

     Specify whether your login is anonymous, using an email address, or a "distinguished name." If the login is not anonymous, enter the login name required by the server.

   Port

     The internet port Evolution connects to in order to access the LDAP database. This is normally 389.

   Use SSL/TLS

     SSL and TLS are security mechanisms. If you select Always, Evolution will not connect unless secure connections are available. The default value is Whenever Possible, which uses secure connections if they are available, but does not cause failure if they are not.

   Search base

     The base entry to use for all your searches. Contact your administrator for information about the correct settings.

   Search scope

     How broad the search is in the directory. The following options are available:

     One

       Searches the Search Base and one entry below it.

     Sub

       Searches the Search Base and all entries below it.

   Timeout Limit

     This is the maximum time Evolution will attempt to download data from the server before giving up.

   Download Limit

     Set the maximum number of results for a given search. Most servers refuse to send more than 500, but you can set the number lower if you want to shorten downloads for very broad searches.

   Display name

     The name that you see on the screen. This could be anything you wish.

4. Click OK.

5. Click OK to permanently make changes or Apply to temporarily set the changes.