9.4 Mail Preferences

The Mail Preferences tool lets you choose how to display citations, how long to wait before marking a message as read, and other mail display settings.

For information on individual e-mail account settings, see Section 9.1, Working with Mail Accounts.

9.4.1 General Mail Settings

The General page has the following options:

Message Fonts: Normally, Evolution uses the same fonts as other GNOME applications. To choose different fonts, deselect Use the same fonts as other applications and select one font for standard typefaces and a second for monospace, terminal, or display.

Message Display: Choose how long you want to wait before marking a message read, how to highlight quotations, and the default encoding. Enable ‘Fall back to threading message by subject' to group the messages as message threads. For more information on threads, see Section 4.2.1, Sorting Mail In E-mail Threads. You can also set the limit to the number of addresses displayed in the message header by enabling ‘Shrink To/CC/BCC header to' option.You can also set the limit for rendering text content in the message you recive.By default, when you receive a message with text content more than 4096 Kilo Bytes, Evolution will not render the message in the preview pane. You can view unformatted text either inline or using an external application. You can also enable Magic spacebar and search folders.

To group the messages as threads select View > Group By threads or press Ctrl +T.

Deleting Mail: Choose whether to delete messages automatically when quitting Evolution and how frequently, and whether you want to explicitly confirm the final deletion of messages.Select Confirm when expunging a folder to confirm the final deletion. You can have four different options to set the frequency for deletion: Everytime, Once per day, Once per week, and Once per month.

9.4.2 HTML Mail Preferences

The HTML Mail page has the following options:

Show Image Animations: Turns animation on or off.

Prompt When Sending HTML Messages to Contacts That Don't Want Them: Some people do not like HTML mail, and you can set Evolution to warn you of this preference. This warning appears only when you send HTML mail to people in your contacts who are listed as disliking HTML.

Loading Images: You can embed a image in an e-mail and have it load only when the message arrives. However, spammers can use image loading patterns to confirm “live” addresses and invade your privacy. You can elect to never load images automatically, to load images only if the sender is in your contacts, or always load images.

If you have chosen not to load images automatically, you can choose to see the images in one message at a time by selecting View > Load Images or press Ctrl +I.

9.4.3 Label Preferences

The Label preferences option lets you add color labels for different kinds of messages. You can add, edit or remove the labels. You can also assign colors to each label you have created.

Labels

NOTE:You cannot remove the default labels.

  1. Click Add and specify the name in the Label Name dialog.

  2. Click the color tab and select a color, then click OK.

To edit label properties:

  1. Select the label and click Edit.

  2. Edit name and color, then click OK.

To assign a label for mail:

  1. Right-click the message from the message preview.

  2. Click Label and select the desired label for the message.

    Labels

9.4.4 Mail Header Preferences

The headers on an incoming message are the information about the message that isn't the content of the message itself, such as the sender and the time it was sent. Select the options here to show or hide different amounts of information about the messages you read. You can also add or remove new mail headers to the list. The default mail headers cannot be removed.

Sender Photograph: This feature adds support for viewing the photograph of the sender at the right side of the preview pane.

To enable this feature, select Edit > Preferences > Mail Preferences > Headers > Show the photograph of sender in the email preview. Deselect this option to disable this feature.

By default it searches only in the local addressbooks enabled for autocompletion. If you deselect the option ‘Search for sender photograph only in the local addressbook', it searches in all the addressbooks enabled for autocompletion. If there are multiple matches for the same contact, it always takes the first one. Consider a contact that has multiple matches - the first one with a photograph and the second without a photo. Here, Evolution takes the first contact regardless of it not having a photograph.

This feature is disabled by default as it causes delay in fetching the messages.

9.4.5 Junk Mail Preferences

You can check your incoming messages for junk content using Bogofilter tool with trainable Bayesian filters.Note that you need to enable the respective junk plugin to enable junk filtering.

To enable junk filtering using SpamAssassin and/or Bogofilter,

  1. Select Edit > Plugins

  2. Select Bogofilter junk plugin and SpamAssassin junk plugin.

General: You can enable checking incoming mails for junk contents and also decide how often you want to delete junk mails on exit. You also have the option to choose either SpamAssassin or Bogofilter or both. Click Check incoming mail for junk.

Checking Incoming Mail for Junk: This option turns automatic junk mail filtering on or off.

Delete junk mails on exit: Select Delete junk messages on exit and also specify when to delete the junk messages from the options (Every time, Once per day, Once per week, Once per month).

Junk Mail settings

Check custom headers for junk: Selecting this option allows to filter the incoming messages for junk based on the custom header values set for the incoming messages. The default custom headers configured for junk are X-Spam-Flag and X-Spam-Level. A message is marked as junk if the header value for X-Spam-Flag is yes and the X-Spam-Level is more than ***** (5 stars). In addition to it, you can add, edit, or remove customized header fields for junk content. Based on the header values, messages are marked as junk.

Do not mark messages as junk if sender is in my address book: Selecting this option allows all the messages to reach the Inbox if the sender is in your address book. Evolution searches only the local address book for the sender of a likely junk message if you select the option Lookup in local address book only. These options are ignored if a match for custom junk headers is found.

Default junk plugin: Select Bogofilter as your junk filter. You can view them only if you have enabled the respective plugins. When you select any option, it also reports if the underlying binary is available or not.

SpamAssassin Options: Remote test performs filtering junk mails on remote servers. It also includes online tests, like checking for blacklisted message senders and ISPs.

This option uses tests that require a network connection, such as checking to see if a message is in a list of known junk messages, or if the sender or gateway are blacklisted by anti-spam organizations.Online tests can make filtering slower, because remote tests add to the amount of time it takes to check for junk mail, but increase accuracy. When you select this option, you do not need to do any additional setup to make this work.

Bogofilter Options: Select Convert mail text to unicode to enable unicode based filtering. For more information on Bogofilter, see Bogofilter site.

NOTE:Check new messages for junk contents option under Edit > Preferences > Mail Accounts > Edit > Receiving option is enabled only for IMAP. Check incoming mail for junk option under Edit > Preferences > Mail Preferences > Junk > General refers only to POP and Local Delivery.

9.4.6 Automatic Contacts Preferences

There are two items in this section: Automatic Contacts automatically adds people that you respond to into your address book. You can select the default address book for automatic contacts from the list.

Instant Messaging Contacts periodically synchronizes contact information and images with your instant messaging program. Currently this only works with Pidgin. Your address book must not be a read-only one for both these features to function properly.

9.4.7 Calendar and Tasks Preferences

Allows you to delete messages after you have acted on an appointment. It also allows you to select calendars to search for meeting conflicts.