Introduction

Evolution is a highly evolved groupware application that makes it easy to store, organize, and retrieve your personal information. Evolution seamlessly combines e-mail, a calendar, an address book, and a task list in one easy-to-use application. You can read and manage your mail and events locally or on a network and thus handle the daily communication more effectively. (Evolution 2.22 User Guide installed with Ubuntu 8.04)

Common Tasks

Webmail in Evolution

• Webmail in Email Clients - A general guide to sending & receiving webmail through your email client.

  • UsingYahooWithEvolution - A guide on using Yahoo with Evolution (Outside U.S.).

  • UsingGmailWithEvolution - A guide on using Gmail with Evolution.

  • UsingHotmailWithEvolution - A guide on using Hotmail with Evolution.

Nokia Bluetooth Sync

• NokiaEvolutionBluetoothSyncing - A guide on syncing Nokia phones with Evolution over Bluetooth.

SpamAssassin Filtering

• SpamFilteringInEvolution - A guide on how to use SpamAssassin in Evolution to filter out unwanted emails.

Google Calendar Integration

• GoogleCalendarWithEvolution - A guide on how to configure Evolution Calendar with Google Calendar.

LDAP Addresses Book

Evolution supports the LDAP protocol, which means you can use a remote list of contacts from a local network or the internet.

To view your contacts on a LDAP server you must fill base search field and choose the sub option on detail panel.

LDAP can be used to access Microsoft Active Directory resources if you use Evolution to access Exchange servers and cannot get the built-in Exchange or MAPI Address Book functions to work. If you need to access these outside of a LAN environment ensure the appropriate LDAP Firewall Ports (TCP 389 and/or 3268) are open. In addition the Search Base has to be set precisely to ensure that the only results returned are valid as the "Search Filter" does not seem to function at all.

For example, this is the Search Base for a SBS 2003 server 'Dname.local' that only returns the items in the 'User' Organizational Unit under the 'MyBusiness' OU:

OU=Users,OU=MyBusiness,DC=Dname,DC=local

The only free online host for LDAP I've found is freeldap.org. Hopefully there are others out there. The website has a section describing configuring Evolution 2.12.1 with freeldap.org which works for Evolution 2.22. I have had some trouble making an offline backup of the remote address book. I hope the article freeldap.org contacts backup in Evolution 2.22.1.1 will solve this.

Please Note: Not all the fields available in Evolution Contacts are supported via LDAP. The unsupported fields are shown in grey when you open a contact from the LDAP server. Consider using the LDAP address book as a remote backup, and not your main address book, if you need any of the unsupported fields.

Gmail Contacts and Evolution

Exporting Evolution Contacts to Gmail

To get your Evolution contacts into Gmail, the process is as follows:

1. In Evolution Contacts select the contacts book you want to take to Gmail

   1. Select File > Save Address Book as VCard and choose a location for the file

2. In Gmail go to Contacts and select Import

   1. Select the Vcard file you exported from evolution
   2. Optionally add a filter to the new contacts (recommended)

This tip is built on the shoulders of the Ubuntu Forum thread Evolution - Gmail contacts

Getting Gmail contacts synchonised in Evolution

This setting will allow a user to see his Gmail contacts in Evolution (even for offline use). This method creates a new address book that synchronises with Gmail contacts.

1. On the Evolution Contacts window, select the New drop-down menu and choose Addess Book. The New Address Book window will appear.

2. Ensure that Type is set to Google.

3. In the Name field, enter a name for the new address book.

4. In the Username field, enter your Google username. This will be something like username@gmail.com.

5. Check Use SSL.

6. Click on the OK button.

The new address book should then be displayed in the Contacts list under Google. Existing contacts should be shown and new contacts synchronised.

Exporting Settings and Mail

• MigrateEvolutionToNewComputer - A guide on how to migrate Evolution and all it's settings to another computer.

• MigrateEvolutionToThunderbird - A guide on how to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird.

Uninstalling Evolution

There is quite a number of component that relies on Evolution. Therefore we cannot simply uninstall Evolution using the 'Add/Remove' functionality. We need to use the synaptic package manager to uninstall Evolution.

There have been quite a number of people reporting to launchpad that Ubuntu will also uninstall some of the GNOME desktop component when you uninstall Evolution :

1. Launchpad - 76295 - evolution uninstalls gnome & gnome-desktop-environment.

2. Launchpad - 50367 - evolution uninstalls gnome & gnome-desktop-environment.

One of the problem that may happen after uninstalling evolution is that your GNOME panel disappear. If this happens we can re-install the gnome panel:

1. Open the 'Run Application' by using the shortcut key: Alt-F2.
2. Type in gnome-terminal. This will bring up the console.
3. Type the following command in the console to install the gnome panel:

sudo apt-get install gnome-panel

See Also

• Thunderbird - A stand-alone email client from Mozilla.

• ClawsMail - A lightweight and fast email client.

External Links

• Evolution - Gnome.org Evolution page.

• go-evolution.org - A wiki website of user contributed documentation.

• FreeLDAP.org - A free LDAP service with support for Evolution

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