Today's date is not shown. Look at the same message tomorrow, and you'll see the date.

Hello,

Every email I have received over the last month (since I installed Thunderbird) has only shown a time in the Date field -- no dates.

I tried expanding the column width to see if a date would show, as I do in Apple Mail, but no luck.

Any suggestions?

Thanks Rich

Please post a screenshot. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem

OK, here is a screen shot of my inbox window. Note the Date field with only times listed, no dates.

These emails are one to ten days old.

Thanks, Rich

it looks to me like there is a corruption in the date information in your emails.

press Ctrl+U. in an email. In the window that opens,

In the gibberish of the header will be a line that looks like this

Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 16:57:00 +0000

What does yours look like.

Hello Matt,

Not sure what you mean about pressing control U "in an email"?

I highlight an email in the listing, press control U, but nothing happens. I'm on a Mac running OS 10.11.6. Thanks.

open the email to read it. View menu > message source

OK, thanks Matt. Here is what I see in the top lines:

Return-Path: <[email protected]> Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from us7.tmd.cloud by us7.tmd.cloud with LMTP id IClKDdSS81pDOCQAw3vygg for <[email protected]>; Thu, 10 May 2018 00:31:16 +0000

How does that look? Rich

Matt,

In case you need to see more lines:

Return-path: <[email protected]> Envelope-to: [email protected] Delivery-date: Thu, 10 May 2018 00:31:16 +0000 Received: from richpate by us7.tmd.cloud with local (Exim 4.89_1) (envelope-from <[email protected]>) id 1fGZUK-009xoY-3l for [email protected]; Thu, 10 May 2018 00:31:16 +0000 To: [email protected] Subject: Rich Pate Photographic Art "Another inquiry" X-PHP-Script: richpate.com/index.php for 73.26.183.49 X-PHP-Filename: /home/richpate/public_html/index.php REMOTE_ADDR: 73.26.183.49 Date: Thu, 10 May 2018 00:31:15 +0000

Rich

Well you finally got to Date: which was the only line I was really interested in.

Just out of interest. The very first line looks like this. From - Tue May 22 09:23:06 2018

Can you check it shows the date and time correctly? Next check your operating system is displaying the date and time correctly. As I do not and never have used a mac, this might help if you have difficulty. https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25636?locale=en_US

I would also ask you to restart Thunderbird with add-ons disabled from the help menu and report if it changes the date format that is shown.

Click the widget on the end of the message list menu bar and add received to the columns displayed. Does it also suffer from the same unfortunate date format.

Best to get the simple and common possibilities out of the way first.

Back to you.

Hello Matt,

Not sure which "first line" you are referring to. The first line in the message source is: Return-Path: <[email protected] </p>

My OS is displaying date and time correctly.

I restarted Thunderbird in Safe Mode. No change in date column, just times are listed as before with a coma as first character.

The added "Received" column also just shows times, no dates.

Opps. The first line didn't print properly in the message I just sent you.

Should be: Return-Path: <[email protected]>

Thunderbird has three formats to show the date columns in the tread pane: one for messages today, on for last week and one for older messages. It is controlled by three prefs:

• mail.ui.display.dateformat.today (default 0)
• mail.ui.display.dateformat.thisweek (default 2)
• mail.ui.display.dateformat.default (default 2)

If the prefs aren't set, a default value is used. Possible values are:

• 0 - None: do not include the date
• 1 - Long: show the date in the locale long date format
• 2 - Short: show the date in the locale short date format
• 3 - Year/month: show the year and month
• 4 - Weekday: weekday, e.g. Mon, Tue

After changing one of these prefs, you have to restart Thunderbird before it takes effect. You can set the preferences via the menu Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor…

Since the default for older messages is to use your system locales long date format, it is best to go to your system settings and check the format there. For Windows it is under Control Panel > Region.

Thanks Onno.

I use a Mac running OS 10.11.6.

I checked the prefs section (which I found in Preferences > Advanced > General > Config Editor...). I did not find the "mail.ui..." prefs you listed.

I included a screen shot of what I found for the mail.ui... prefs.

Any suggestions?

Rich

There's one more pref that might make a difference. Check under Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Date and Time Formatting. There you have the choice between Application locale and Regional Settings locale. Try flipping the choice and see if that helps.

Thanks Onno,

I can not find these settings on my Mac version of Thunderbird.

Please see the screen shots of my Tool menu and my Advanced Prefs window below.

I'm sorry. That preference is new to version 60, which isn't released yet.

I checked my version, 52.7.0.

I just updated to version 52.8.0 and restarted. It did not help with my date problem.

Looks like version 60 is a long ways off. Is there any hope for getting a fix before then? Thanks.

Rich

You can try adding the three preferences mentioned before as integer preference with value 1. This should give you your system's long date format for all dates. It looks like something's wrong with the short date format. You could also check your date settings in your Mac System Preferences as described here: https://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Date-Format-on-a-Mac

Do I just copy and paste these into the preferences listing and change their values to "1"?

    mail.ui.display.dateformat.today (default 0)
   mail.ui.display.dateformat.thisweek (default 2)
   mail.ui.display.dateformat.default (default 2) 

Thanks.