Setting up Evolution and using Spam Filters

This document explains how to configure Evolution for reading e-mail, as well as how to enable a filter to block your SPAM. Although Evolution can be configured to synchronize with a PDA, that is outside of the scope of this document. You can click on any icon to see a larger picture.

The first time you launch Evolution, you are given the Evolution Configuration Wizard. If you do not see the configuration wizard, but instead are brought into the Evolution main screen, you can start the configuration wizard by first selecting the INBOX under the "Shortcuts" window on the left. Then select the Tools menu, and Mail Settings. From that screen you can add a new profile, and the configuration wizard dialogue will appear.

The first thing you will need to do is tell Evolution a little bit about this mail identity. Go ahead and put your name in the field labeled Full Name. By default, Evolution will try to make your email address username@hostname.astro.ufl.edu, where username is your userid, and hostname is your host name. Go ahead and change the Email Address setting to your-username@astro.ufl.edu, and remove the hostname from the address. You can also optionally specify a signature file, if you use one, and an organization name from this window. A suggested Organization name would be Department of Astronomy, University of Florida.

The next screen you'll see will ask you for some information on the mail server that you use for incoming mail. For the Server Type field, select IMAP. For the Host enter mailhost.astro.ufl.edu. For the Username, enter your userid. You should go ahead and enable the option for Use secure connection SSL because that will help keep your password from being compromised by encrypting it.

The next screen will ask you some basic questions about checking your email. By default, Evolution checks for new mail every 10 minutes. If you wish to change the frequency of how often your email is checked, you can select the check box Automatically check for new mail every xx minutes and adjust the amount of time. If you use procmail, or another mail filtering tool to sort your mail, then you may wish to check the option Check for new messages in all folders. However, if you have a large number of folders, than this may be slow. When you're first switching to Evolution, you may not see any of your mail folders. There are two settings you should adjust to correct this. The first is to uncheck the option Show only subscribed folders. The second is to check the option Override server-supplied folder namespace. You will also need to specify a Namespace, which will most likely be ~username/mail/ where username is your userid. The last option you will want to select on this page is to Apply filters to new messages in INBOX on this server. This will allow any filtering rules you specify, which we will do in a few moments, to be used.

The next screen you will see are the options to configure your email server for outgoing mail. The first thing is to select the Server Type which should be SMTP. Next you will need to specify the Host. If you are using Evolution on a desktop machine within the department, then you should specify the host mailhost.astro.ufl.edu. If you are using Evolution from a remote location, then you will need to contact your internet service provider and ask them for their outgoing smtp server. If you are using the Astronomy mailhost for your outgoing mail, you will want to disable the options Use secure connection and Server requires authentication. At some point in the future we will be able to provide remote smtp service through smtpauth, but we have not developed that service yet.

The next screen asks you if you would like this email account to be your default identity. Typically, most users will only have the one email identity, so you'll most likely wish to say yes to the option to Make this my default account.

Once you have configured evolution, it's time to configure it to automatically filter your incoming spam. If you do not have a folder for your spam, you should create one. This is done by right clicking your email identity under the folders menu, and selecting the option to create a new folder. We recommend using the folder name spam for your spam mail. Next, go to the Tools menu bar and select the option for Filters. From there, select the option to Add a new filter. We recommend setting the rule name to spam so you can easily identify what rule it is. Under the If section you will want to change the selection Sender to Subject. You will want to change contains to starts with. In the text field, you will want to enter *****SPAM*****, that is 5 asterisks followed by the word SPAM, followed by 5 asterisks. If this text is not entered correctly, then your mail will not be properly filtered. Under the Then section, you'll only need to change the option for <click here to select a folder> and pick the folder you wish your mail to be moved to. Although you could chose to have Evolution automatically delete your mail, we do not recommend that to avoid accidently deleting false positives.

As always, if you have any problems with configuring Evolution, the IT staff will be glad to assist.