Had the same problem with evolution version 2.28.2-3. I had network-manager installed and running as 'NetworkManager' (perhaps the original poster did not grep it due to the capital letters in the name and without the hyphen).
After a shutdown of the network manager and a clean start of evolution it comes up in 'online' mode as it should. Onet. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org