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Emails without Date: headers do not sort correctly

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by gordol

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This has been going on for many version: Emails that lack a Date: header do not get sorted in TBird by when the message was sent, rather by when it was received. And more than that, if I move the message to another folder, it will now sort by when it landed in the new folder.

Rebuilding the index does not resolve this.

This is a particular pain for me, as it affects emails from my brother, and breaks the email threads.

I have confirmed that the emails are missing the Date header by checking the message source. There are plenty of Received: headers with timestamps, TBird should failback to using the oldest of those if the Date: header is missing. Forte Agent has been doing that since 1997 or so.

This has been going on for many version: Emails that lack a Date: header do not get sorted in TBird by when the message was sent, rather by when it was received. And more than that, if I move the message to another folder, it will now sort by when it landed in the new folder. Rebuilding the index does not resolve this. This is a particular pain for me, as it affects emails from my brother, and breaks the email threads. I have confirmed that the emails are missing the Date header by checking the message source. There are plenty of Received: headers with timestamps, TBird should failback to using the oldest of those if the Date: header is missing. Forte Agent has been doing that since 1997 or so.

All Replies (4)

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There is a discussion on how to work around incorrect Date headers:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1158818

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The Date header in the message isn't showing incorrectly, it's MISSING. Will try that solution anyway, since it does address one of the answers I was looking for. :)

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If the date head is missing then the email is malformed. I suggest you create a filter and simply delete all malformed mail and it will not cause you a problem. Or you could address the source of your malformed mail.

But complaining the a horse with three legs is not stable is not the way to go.

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Matt said

If the date head is missing then the email is malformed. I suggest you create a filter and simply delete all malformed mail and it will not cause you a problem. Or you could address the source of your malformed mail. But complaining the a horse with three legs is not stable is not the way to go.

Could you be any less helpful? Perhaps more unconstructive? I'm not going to filter out emails from my brother. I cannot fix his mail system, and I've told him about this problem. I was looking for assistance is compensating for the problem and suggesting a programming fix for a future version of TBbird.

sfhowes provided some useful assistance.