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How to deal with incoming emails with no Date field

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by KarlGrimm

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Thunderbird 52.7.0 I have a Skype Subscription, so I receive emails from [email protected]. Eg. "your credit will run out soon" and so forth. The trouble is, these incoming emails all get shown as received TODAY, because Skype is sending them with no Date field!!

Is there any way I can sort my Inbox by Date, including emails where the Date field is missing. When I view the same account with Webmail using Horde, the Skype emails are correctly sorted by date, but are shown with Date = UNKNOWN. Presumably Horde looks at the date of the last Received field and uses that for sorting, when no Date field is available.

Many thanks.

Thunderbird 52.7.0 I have a Skype Subscription, so I receive emails from [email protected]. Eg. "your credit will run out soon" and so forth. The trouble is, these incoming emails all get shown as received TODAY, because Skype is sending them with no Date field!! Is there any way I can sort my Inbox by Date, including emails where the Date field is missing. When I view the same account with Webmail using Horde, the Skype emails are correctly sorted by date, but are shown with Date = UNKNOWN. Presumably Horde looks at the date of the last Received field and uses that for sorting, when no Date field is available. Many thanks.

All Replies (4)

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what have skype to say for their defective emails?

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The usual: "There is no problem with our emails sir. Please to be reinstalling your Operating System." and so forth. I find it very hard to get past the first level support people at Microsoft. It is very sad that one of the largest IT companies in the world doesn't feel the need to conform to global standards. If I could ditch them, I would, but I need Skype. So I am hoping that Mozilla (a wonderful organisation that actually knows it's stuff and responds to tech enquiries, grovel grovel grovel ...) might have a workaround I can use in Thunderbird.

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KarlGrimm said

So I am hoping that Mozilla (a wonderful organisation that actually knows it's stuff and responds to tech enquiries, grovel grovel grovel ...)

NO they don't, and some days I am sure I don't

Lets see if some of the other defaults that make up a mail header or Thunderbird record help.

At the right end of the list of mail headings (above the up down scroll bar) is a widget that allows you to customize the heading shown. Try selecting the received heading. This is what Microsoft usually use in Outlook, so they probably remembered that one. You will note that the times are usually the same, but Date reflects when the email was sent, not received. This can be quite different if there was a delay somewhere in the transmission chain and becomes relevant when you are supposed to reply in 24hours and it takes 48 for delivery. Rare but they do occur. Especially sending from private domains to major players like Yahoo ho routinely drop connections to a server that is "new to them" only accepting delivery "latter".

Failing that (it is not 100% but close for recent mails anyway) is the order received heading.

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Thanks very much Matt. Sorting by Order Received does in fact solve the problem. Received dates were identical to Date, so didn't help, but Order Received works.

I might still try to get Skype to fix their automated emails though.