[Evolution] Address book funcionality turned off

["Patrick O'Callaghan" <poc usb ve>]

[Evo 2.4.2 and 2.5.1]

I have 2 address books, one local (Personal) and one remote (LDAP). The
LDAP one is the default.

They used to work.

In the Mail window, auto-completion is apparently turned off (i.e. it
doesn't auto-complete, even for addresses I use all the time). The
autocompletion options under Preferences are correct. All optional
Plugins are enabled except Groupwise and Exchange stuff, which I have no
need for.

If I go to Preferences under Contacts, I see both address books on the
right-hand pane, with check marks, but the left-hand pane has two empty
boxes and no text. This doesn't look right. Furthermore, in the Contacts
window, I can no longer do searches. The search bar is greyed out. 

I suspect something in my XML files is borked, but it's wierd as I have
the exact same problem on two machines and I don't copy .evolution data
from one to the other.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

poc

PS As an aside: does anyone else think that there should be only one
Preferences window for all Evo's options, rather than a different one
for each mode? I find this user-hostile.