In forwarded email, it uses 'Date' data located in the header of the original received email because you are forwarding the original email. The date header in email will be when the email was composed and sent by sender and that is determined by whatever their computer is set up to use. Which means you are correct when you say "So for me, the date-header in the forwarded message is valid"

The date displayed in 'Date' column and in Message Pane header area is determined by your computer date/time and Timezone settings. It reads the Date in header and calibrates what is displayed based on your computer settings.

In the view source, there are various 'Received' sections which relates to the path of email as sent from server to server and each will have the date time stamp determined by where each server was located around the world. So there could be several different 'received' dates. The one at the top is the last one when it gets received by the server holding your account.

This means that the 'Personal Date/Timezone stamp' you wish to enter may not be relevant to the recipient of your email if they are in yet another timezone. However, your sent email will also have it's own Date.

All sections in an email you are composing are editable. So you could manually add a row to table and enter something like this: Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 08:57:20 -0700. Received on server: Thu, 24 May 2012 17:57:20 +0200. You could use the View Source of original email and copy paste the 'Received' server time - the one listed at the top of the headers.

The alternative would be to include all the headers before you selected to forward. View > Headers > All click on 'Forward' This will include all the headers, so all timestamps of received servers will also be included.

Hi, thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, this is not what a regular user, that has no IT ambitions, wants to have. The user wants to see the same timestamp when forwarding as the one that is used/created when enlisting the new mail in the inbox-list and not have a UTC-conform timestamp that needs to be re-calculated by the user. I have tested this exact behavior with an other e-mail client, mostly used by companies and starting with O.... What ever ones personal opinion about that particular e-mail client might be, it is a mayor player and has set several ground rules of what users expect to have in specific situations... and in that case of forwarding a e-mail it will always include the timestamp as displayed in the inbox-list. Which, IMHO, is absolutely logic. Please don't miss-understand me, I really like Thunderbird and personally, I don't care about such deviation of "well-known behavior", but I really try hard to get Thunderbird out in small companies, and it mostly doesn't work, because of some stupid nonsense, that probably could be mitigated by re-formating the timestamp to a more user-friendly layout... in php that would be date_format()... I am sure, such an equivalent will exist in what ever programming language that portion of Thunderbird is coded in. So in the end, this is a clear feature-request to MZLA Tech. to create at least an option in the settings pane that will make Thunderbird display the Date when forwarding an e-mail, in a human readable format that matches the format in the inbox. There could be an option field:

On forwarding E-Mails, how should the incoming timestamp be displayed:

• Thunderbird classic: Use time as found in header (Day, Month, Year, UTC-Time)
• Thunderbird classic human readable: Use time as found in header (Day, Month, Year, time shift recalculated)
• Copy timestamp of enlisting to inbox

This way, one can choose what ever suites best.

Regards, Felix

re :The user wants to see the same timestamp when forwarding as the one that is used/created when enlisting the new mail in the inbox-list

It sounds like those people who make that sort of request do not understand why Thunderbird has automatically altered the date time by using the computer date timezone. They sound confused by why does the Date in Forwarded email look different to the date time I see on my computer in Thunderbird Message List date column.

Answer because it is different. When a person composes an email, that date is specific to the date when it was composed and not the equivalent date/time somewhere else in the world.

However, what you want already exists. But it is under the 'Received:' header and that is displayed when you use full headers.

Email forwarding is forwarding of original email so it contains original data cleaned from original headers. Including original data is very important in a business enviroment and as emails are now considered documents, altering them could be regarded as a more serious problem. That original Date info is relevant as it states when it was written by sender and is part of the original email and tampering with it may be regarded as attempting to falsify a document.

However, nothing is stopping people from using Full headers which would include the various received server times. The full headers contain the real date time as according to when sender created email plus all the various recalculated 'Received:' date times as that email may pass all around the world going through various servers including the date time it actually arrived on the server which holds your email account. There is rarely more than a few seconds between those times. So the date and hour will be the same. The info is already available. Header data 'Received:' on your server in your timezone would be same date time as your computer assuming you've set up your computer correctly according to the timezone where it is located.

Then whomever gets a copy of that email; should they really need to want to know all the vaious equivalent timezone then they can read the headers and will have all the information they would ever need.

The email you are resending as a reply will also have it's own UTC timestamp date format as applied by your computer settings and that may also be entirely different from whatever the recipient is using.

It is totally worthless to a recipient to see what someone else saw in their 'Date column. They could be on the other side of the world. I'm only interested in two things. The relevant date time on my computer and the original date time when email was created. All this information is already contained in the headers.

If I receive a forwarded email that contained the full headers, then I have full headers of original email forwarded and full headers of the email sent by person forwarding. I can read when it was sent, when it was received, when it was forwarded and all of that information does not need any recalculations because it has already been recalculated and displayed in all the header data.

It sounds like those people who make that sort of request do not understand why Thunderbird has automatically altered the date time by using the computer date timezone. They sound confused by why does the Date in Forwarded email look different to the date time I see on my computer in Thunderbird Message List date column.

You are right, you have to take the glasses of an user to be able to understand the severeness of that issue, else you end up not understanding why this is an issue!

To keep focused on the issue: I believe that forwarding the full headers will not help, as the recipient might be overwhelmed with all the information and might therefor have problems to filter out the relevant parts (in this particular case, the relevant information are the creation and receive date).

The average user, for sure will ask, why when forwarding a mail, the recipient date is different from the one in the mailbox column. How every, you brought up a very important aspect: The email creation time. So in order to have accurate and for the average user meaning full date/time information when forwarding a mail, I believe, then the best would be, to have 2 date rows. One with the creation timestamp and one showing the timestamp as it is in the inbox column, both including the UTC extension.

I really recommend to considerate such an option. The average user has no idea what UTC is and if, how to calculate them... the average user needs total clarity in his daily business and doesn't want to be bothered with such things as calculating UTC timestamps.

Furthermore I have observed, that since many users use cloud email services like gmail, office365 and others, mostly global companies, that they often display a wrong UTC timestamp. For example, my customer receives a mail from his business associate, that works in the same town, but when he forwards that mail to a 3rd party, the timestamp is UTC 0000, although both are in UTC +0200. This is, because the business associate or it's administrator have not properly set the timezones in their environment. When forwarding such a mail to a 3rd party, the forwarded header as Thunderbird proposes it, is definitely wrong compared to the one of the time, when Thunderbird fetched the mail from the server. I have tested the same mail with Outlook. Outlook displays the same timestamp as in the inbox column. Again, we cannot assume, that the average user of such a cloud solution knows, that such settings have to be made prior to use, again it's cloud, it ready... It's like fast food... When I go to MD's it's ready to eat, I don't have to cock my burger and fries first once they're on my tray! They're ready to eat... So in this case the best e-mail client ever must be able to mitigate those deficits to create also a perfect user experience!

so in the mean while, regards, Felix

re :To keep focused on the issue: I believe that forwarding the full headers will not help, as the recipient might be overwhelmed with all the information and might therefor have problems to filter out the relevant parts (in this particular case, the relevant information are the creation and receive date).

If you have set up to include full headers then it gives you the option of removing/editing anything you do not want to include, so the issue you mention would never effect the recipient.

re :For example, my customer receives a mail from his business associate, that works in the same town, but when he forwards that mail to a 3rd party, the timestamp is UTC 0000, although both are in UTC +0200. This is, because the business associate or it's administrator have not properly set the timezones in their environment. You are correct. If someone has their computer set up with wrong timezone then the 'Date' displayed in a Thunderbird 'Date' column would be reflected by the 'Timezone' of computer. So the 'Date' in the headers would still state the date when email was created according to the computer whether computer is correct or not is an entirely different kettle of fish.

However, as I mentioned, the 'Received:' data in the full headers is that date applied by the receiving servers and that will never be wrong.

There are different Dates. Date when email is composed and selected for Send Later or Sent. The is is the 'Date' attached to the email because that is when it was created by sender. It may not necessarilly be the date when it was sent. That is the same Date which you see in the 'Date'column header and in email header, but it will have been adjusted to your particular timezone. After all email written at 9AM in the UK - at the same moment in Australia it is 6PM. So email with Date 9am is received within seconds by person in Australia, will never say it was composed 9 hours ago because it wasn't. But it's still important to know the actual time the sender composed it.

Received Date when email is passed through various servers which may alter vastly depending upon where around the world they pass. But that data is in the 'Received ' headers. It's gets a bit weird when emails gets bounced forwards and then backwards, it then looks like it was sent to me tomorrow - but fortunately the computer knows the timezones and Thunderbird corrects it.

Date when downloaded. You may not turn on computer and download until let's say after the weekend, so mail received on server on the Friday may not be downloaded in Thunderbird until Monday.

Basically, it's all relative. What looks right to you may not look correct for your recipient. So including maybe a first 'Received' date (the lowest one) will be an accurate date of when the first smtp server received the email and the top most one shows time when it reached your server. You can edit out all the rest of the unwanted headers. OR do it the other way around, open View Source and copy the bit you want and paste it into the email you are creating where the other date info is in the table section. You can add another row to the table.