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 Working with Mail Accounts.


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.

Deleting Mail: Choose whether to delete messages automatically when quitting Evolution, and whether you want to explicitly confirm the final deletion of messages.

New Mail Notifications: Evolution can alert you to the arrival of new mail with a beep or by playing a sound file. Choose your alert noise, or select none, as you prefer.


HTML Mail Preferences

The HTML Mail page has the following options:

Show Animated Images: 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 > Message Display > Load Images.

The Colors tab lets you select different color labels for individual messages. Return to the default settings by clicking Restore Defaults.


Color Preferences

The Mail Color preferences tool lets you select color labels for different kinds of messages. Click a color to change the color, or change the label associated with that color.


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.


Junk Mail Preferences

There are only two items in this section: Check Incoming Mail for Junk and Include Remote Tests. Checking for junk mail uses the SpamAssassin* tool with trainable Bayesian filters. It also includes online tests, like checking for blacklisted message senders and ISPs. Online tests can make filtering slower, but more accurate. Select the options here to choose your mail filtering method.


Automatic Contacts Preferences

There are two items in this section: Automatic Contacts automatically adds people that you respond to into your address book. For automatic contacts to work properly, you must select an address book with write permissions. Instant Messaging Contacts periodically synchronizes contact information and images with your instant messaging program. Currently this only works with Gaim.


Meetings & 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.