Date and time wrong in Thunderbird

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DreamBuilder
Posts: 24
Joined: June 24th, 2007, 11:49 am
Location: Central Ohio

Date and time wrong in Thunderbird

Post by DreamBuilder »

Installed latest version of Thunderbird on 3/21/08 on my PC using XP home edition. When I receive my email, the date and time is wrong. The time shows later than it presently is and the date has shown 2 day in advance. The date and time on my computer are correct, as is the time zone. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Phil
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Rod Whiteley
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Joined: December 6th, 2004, 3:41 am
Location: UK

Post by Rod Whiteley »

Select a message and choose: View – Message Source   Look for the Date header. Does Thunderbird display that date?
Rod
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DreamBuilder
Posts: 24
Joined: June 24th, 2007, 11:49 am
Location: Central Ohio

Post by DreamBuilder »

Hi Rod,

Thanks for the reply. Not all of my messages come in with the wrong date, but many do, maybe you can help me figure this out. I never noticed the wrong date on my email before I switched to Thunderbrd. Here is a sample of one of the messages. The date starts out right, but as you read down, the date changes. See what you think. By the way I am very limited on computer knowledge, so take it easy on me.

Thanks,
Phil

From - Sun Mar 23 14:56:32 2008
X-Account-Key: account2
X-UIDL: aU*#!Lle!!fc>"!ik~"!
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
Return-Path: <ret>
Received: from psmtp.com (exprod5mx211.postini.com [64.18.0.70])
by mail.thewavz.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id m2NH6gMI097972
for <thewavz>; Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:06:42 -0400 (EDT)
(envelope-from ret@someonesinformations.com)
Received: from source ([216.22.37.46]) by exprod5mx211.postini.com ([64.18.4.10]) with SMTP;
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:07:34 PDT
To: ********@thewavz.com
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:43:28 -0500
Message-ID: <1206398608>
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Rod Whiteley
Posts: 11480
Joined: December 6th, 2004, 3:41 am
Location: UK

Post by Rod Whiteley »

Starting at the bottom and working upwards, the computer that sent the message has the wrong date and time set. That computer sent it to an SMTP server registered in Mountain View CA just after 10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. That server immediately transferred it to your SMTP server registered in Lima OH at just after 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. (There is a difference of around a minute between the server clocks, but I cannot tell which one is right.) A couple of hours later, just before 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Thunderbird downloaded it from your server. Report the problem to whoever sent the message.
Rod
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DreamBuilder
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Joined: June 24th, 2007, 11:49 am
Location: Central Ohio

Post by DreamBuilder »

Ok Rod thanks.
drivebull
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Re: Date and time wrong in Thunderbird

Post by drivebull »

The problem was still showing on Thunderbird 3.0: the "Date" and the "Received" columns show the same information, while they should be, in general, at least a bit different.
I'm going to show you the solution that worked for me on TB 3.0:

Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Config Editor

Set the variable:
mailnews.use_received_date = true (boolean)

If you are using a POP3 account, that should suffice.

For a IMAP account, you should set also:
mailnews.customDBHeaders = Received (string)

In this way, the "Received" column will not be identical to the "Date" column anymore; now it shows the reception date on your mail server, that is generally considered to be a better choice.

I've been using Microsoft Outloox Express for so many years, 5 years ago I was wanting to migrate to Thunderbird but when I discovered the Date problem I had to give up.
Sometimes I checked it up again, hoping that the bug could be fixed, but with no result. On forums dealing on this subject, many of the contributors said that "The Solution" was to sort by the "Order Received" column, but that was NOT a definitive solution, sometimes it worked but in some cases it didn't.

It was such a shame that such a good piece of software could not perform a column that in every Webmail interface and every other major Email Client (Microsoft) was presented by default; that limitation was totally unacceptable for me.

A few months ago I started to search again on this subject among Forums, and after soooo many tries I finally found a contributor (I don't remember who and where) who was suggesting the IMAP solution.
That solution worked for me, so it should for you!

Note: I recently updated to Thunderbird 3.1 and everything is still fine.

Gook luck! And let me know!
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