Introduction to Evolution

Evolution helps you to work in a networked environment. Evolution contains the following component applications:

Calendar

You can use Calendar to schedule appointments, meetings, and tasks.

Contacts

You can use Contacts to create an address book of your contacts.

Email

You can use Evolution to compose, send, receive, and manage email messages.

Summary

Summary gives you an overview of your day. Summary displays an overview of your email messages, and your appointments, meetings, and tasks.

Tasks

You can use Tasks to manage the work tasks that you perform.

Connectors

You can use connectors to connect to other calendar servers.

To start Evolution, click Launch, then choose Email and Calendar.

Figure 1–1 shows an Evolution window that displays Summary.

Figure 1–1 Evolution Summary Window

The Evolution window contains the following items:

Menubar

Contains menus that you use to perform tasks in Evolution. Different menu items are available, depending which application you use.

Toolbar

Contains buttons that you use to perform tasks in Evolution. Different toolbar buttons are available, depending which application you use.

Shortcuts bar

Displays your shortcuts. Shortcuts are icons that provide quick access to your folders. The shortcuts bar is located at the extreme left side of the Evolution window.

To display the shortcuts bar, choose View -> Shortcut Bar so that the Shortcut Bar menu item is selected.

To hide the shortcuts bar, choose View -> Shortcut Bar again, so that the Shortcut Bar menu item is deselected.

Folder pane

Displays a list of your folders. The folder pane is located at the left side of the Evolution window.

To display the folder pane, choose View -> Folder Bar so that the Folder Bar menu item is selected. Alternatively, click on the name of the current folder at the top of the message list.

To hide the folder pane, choose View -> Folder Bar again, so that the Folder Bar menu item is deselected. Alternatively, click on the Close button at the top of the folder pane.

Most Evolution components also contain a searchbar. You can use the searchbar to perform simple searches. For example, you can search an email folder such as Inbox for a message that contains a particular text string.