Address Books

Balsa supports the use of multiple address books, both local VCARD and remote LDAP address books, both of which can be configured here. GnomeCard also uses VCARD address books, so this allows Balsa to share address books with other GNOME applications.

The main portion of the preferences page is occupied by the list of current address books for Balsa. The list shows the type of address book, the name, and whether it is included in automatic alias expansion when typing new messages. There are also several buttons that manipulate the list of address books:

Add

Using this adds a new address book for Balsa to use to find addresses. It brings up a series of dialog boxes that step through the process of adding a new address book.

Figure 10. Add Address Book Dialog (Step 1)

If Balsa was not compiled with LDAP support it will not let you choose LDAP as an addressbook type. Once the type of address book is selected you must specify the name and location of the address book.

Figure 11. VCARD Address Book Dialog (Step 2)

With LDAP support, the dialog looks somewhat different, offering options to set the location of the directory instead of a file.

Figure 12. LDAP Address Book Dialog (Step 2)

In order to use a LDAP address book, you need to know the host name of the LDAP server. Depending on the server configuration, you may need also so called Base Domain Name which identifies your particular department. You can always try leaving Base Domain Name field empty and a default value will be used (OpenLDAP stores the default Base Domain Name in /etc/openldap/ldap.conf). If this does not work, you may need to ask your administrator for the value of this. The usual values are usually similar to: "dc=theochem,dc=KTH,dc=se" or "o=Theoretical Chemistry, c=SE".

Modify

This enables you to change the properties of the selected address book.

Figure 13. Modify an Address Book

It is possible to modify both the name and location for any address book. Also, you can change whether the contents of the address book will be used when attempting to auto-complete an address when sending a message.

Delete

Delete the selected address book.

Set as Default

Set the selected mailbox as default.