Evolution is currently offline due to a network outage. Evolution will return to online mode once a network connection is established. If you have this error when updating your system (for example, from Ubuntu 14 to Ubuntu 16), the solution is to run Evolution with this command: evolution --force-online That is usually related to a combination of evolution, dbus, and NetworkManager. With all three installed the idea was that NM would say whether it had a working network or not over dbus. Tools like evolution would ask on dbus about the state of the network and switch to online or offline as networks were hotplugged. This breaks down when the network isn't managed by NM but NM is still running. Such as when /etc/network/interfaces is configured to use ifupdown instead. If NM is running then it won't have any networks under its control and it fails to recognize that the system does actually have a network running outside of its control. It will respond to evolution ...