Now that you've had a look around the Inbox, it's time to check for new mail. Click Get Mail in the toolbar to check your mail. If you haven't entered any mail settings yet, the setup assistant will ask you for the information it needs to check your email.
The assistant will give you several dialog boxes where you configure:
your personal information
your outgoing email server information
your mail account identity name
To check your email, press the Check Mail button. If this is your first time checking mail, or you haven't asked Evolution to store your password, you'll be prompted for the password. Enter your password and your email will be downloaded.
Can't Check Mail?: If you get an error message instead of mail, you probably need to check your network settings. To learn how to do that, have a look at the section called Mail Settings in Chapter 9, or ask your system administrator.
Sharing Mailboxes with Other Mail Programs: If you want to use Evolution and another email client, such as Mutt, at the same time, here's how:
Download your mail in the other application as you would normally.
In Evolution Tools->Mail Settings, and pick the account you'd like to use to share mail. You may want to create a new account just for this source of mail.
Under the Receiving Mail tab, select the type of mail file that your other mail application uses, and then enter the full path to that file.
Click the OK button.
If someone sends you an attachment, a file attached to an email, Evolution will display the file at the bottom of the message to which it's attached. Text, including HTML formatting and embedded images, will appear as part of the message, rather than at the end of the message as an attachment.
If you get an attachment with an email message, Ximian Evolution can help you save it or open it with the appropriate applications.
To save an attachment to disk:
Click the downward pointing arrow on the attachment icon and select Save to Disk.
Choose a location and name for the file.
Click OK.
To Open an Attachment in a Program:
Open the mail message with the attachment you want to read.
Click the arrow next the attachment icon.
Select the program you'd like to use. It will start up and open the document.
When someone sends you HTML mail that includes an image in the body of the message— like the welcome message in your Inbox when you first started Ximian Evolution— Evolution will display the image inside the message. You can create messages like this by using the Insert->Image tool in the message composer.
If the image isn't included in the message, but is, instead, a link to an image, Evolution can download the image from the Internet for you. However, Evolution will not display the image unless you ask it to. This is because remotely hosted images can be slow to load and display, and can even be used by spammers to track who reads their email. Having images not load automatically helps protect your privacy.
If you want the images to load for one message, select View->Message Display->Load Images. If you want Ximian Evolution to load remotely hosted images more often, go to the Display tab of the Tools->Mail Settings dialog.
Loading Images from the Net through an HTTP Proxy: If you use an HTTP proxy, Evolution must be able to find it through the gnome-vfs subsystem before it can load images from the Internet. This is also the case if you wish to access weather and news information through the Summary tool. You can tell the GNOME Virtual File System about your HTTP proxy in one of two ways:
- Configure it with Nautilus
Open a Nautilus window
Select Preferences->Edit Preferences.
Go to the Navigation tab.
Click the Use HTTP Proxy checkbox and enter the location of your HTTP proxy in the Location field.
- Configure it with the gconftool command
Open a terminal.
Enter the command gconftool --type=bool --set /system/gnome-vfs/use-http-proxy "TRUE"
Enter the command gconftool --type=string --set /system/gnome-vfs/http-proxy-host "your-proxy-url"
Enter the command gconftool --type=int --set /system/gnome-vfs/http-proxy-port "8080"
For more information about the gconftool command, read the gconftool man page.