Organizing your address book is a lot like organizing your mail. You can have folders and searches the same way you can with mail, but the address book does not allow Virtual Folders. It does, however, allow each card to fall under several categories, and allow you to create your own categories. To learn about categories, read the section called Grouping with Categories.
Evolution offers two ways for you to organize your cards. The first way is to use folders; this works the same way mail folders do. For more flexibility, you can also mark contacts as elements of different categories. To better integrate with email tools, you can also create lists of contacts that you can send mail to as a single person.
The simplest way to group address cards is to use folders. By default, cards start in the Contacts folder. If you've read Chapter 1 then you already know that you can create a new folder by selecting File->New->Folder and that you can put new folders anywhere you like. Just like with mail, cards must be in a card folder, and no card can be in two places at once. If you want more flexibility, try the section called Grouping with Categories.
To put a card into a folder, just drag it there from the folder view. Remember that contact cards can only go in contact folders, just like mail can only go in mail folders, and calendars in calendar folders.
The other way to group cards is to mark them as belonging to different categories. That means that you can mark a card as being in several categories or no category at all. For example, I put my friend Matthew's card in the "Business" category, because he works with me, the "Friends" category, because he's also my friend, and the "Frequent" category, because I call him all the time and can never remember his phone number.
To mark a card as belonging to a category, click the Categories button at the lower right. From the dialog box that appears, you can check as many or as few categories as you like.
To create a list of contacts:
Open the list creation dialog box by clicking the New List button or selecting File -> New -> Contact List .
Enter a name for the list.
Enter names or email addresses of contacts, or just drag contacts from the main window into the list.
Choose whether you would like to hide the email addresses when you send a message to the list. Unless it is a very small list, it is recommended that you leave the addresses hidden. This is the same thing as using the "Bcc:" feature discussed in the section called Specifying Recipients for Email in Chapter 3.
When you are done, click OK. The list will appear as a contact card, which you can use as you would any other. That includes emailing the list to another person, and, of course, sending email to the list.
To mail the list, open a new email and type the name you chose for the list. Ximian Evolution will address the message to the entire list when you send it. You can also right-click on the list's address card in the Contact Manager and select Send Message to List.