Open Bug 123786 Opened 23 years ago Updated 3 years ago

mails should be sorted by Received time,not sending time

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
MailNews: Message Display
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: jerry.tan, Unassigned)

References

Details

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; Q312461)
BuildID:    20020206

in mailnews, threads are sorted by sending time.
they should be sorted by Received time.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.change date to tommorrow,and send yourself one mail,marked as A
2.change date back, send yourself an mail again,marked as B
3.receive .

Actual Results:  Mail A is at the top of thread pane,
for thread is sorted by Sending time.

Expected Results:  Mail B is at the top of thread pane.
Thread sorted by Received time will be more usefully.

In outlook express, the threads are sorted by Received time.
you can change your view settings: VIEW - SORT BY - ORDER RECEIVED
QA Contact: esther → laurel
Severity: normal → enhancement
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
True, you can sort by order received using the menu.  However, I believe that
the "Date" column should be able to display the date/time sent or the date/time
received.  Most other mail clients can handle this (including Evolution and
Outlook).
Yes, but it is a pain to always go back to the menu, rather than just clicking
on the Date heading.

A better UI is to have the Recived/Sent item be sticky, just like
Ascending/Decending.
*** Bug 160126 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 135930 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I propose the following solution: once bug 57898 (multiple sort) is implemented
- IF it's implemented well - this problem magically disappears. See my bug 57898
comment 11 (I hope that's the format Bugzilla will make into a link): there, it
is proposed that Shift-click on a column header would add that as another
sorting criterion; the same way, Shift-click on an already sorted column could
un-sort it. And because sort by received time (requested by this bug) is
actually the same as "no sort", easy access to un-sorting solves this bug, right?

By the way, we don't have any "Received time" available to sort by, if I'm not
mistaken. I don't see such a thing in the message headers. Therefore, changing
the Date column from "Date sent" to "Date received" is not an option -
fortunately, I'd say.
I think "no sorting" is not the best option. After all, this would imply that
items would always get presented in mailbox order--but it should also be
possible for the user to request reverse mailbox order, which happens to be the
default for many other mail clients.
Ah, yes, Jens is right - I didn't think of that. But what UI do you propose? I
repeat that AFAIK comment 2 is not an option as we don't have any "date
received". Except that Mozilla could parse the first "Received:" header, but
that gives us the date when the message was received by the last mail server,
not by the local computer. If that is implemented, it should simply be an
additional column (that you can display by clicking the icon to the right of the
column headers), not a replacement for the Date column.
I've been getting spam with incorrect date headers, making this a daily
annoyance.  Is it possible to keep all mail received in one "batch" together
while still sorting by sent date within batches?  Could that be the default
action for clicking on the header for the "Date" column?
See also bug 166254. As explained there, one of the bugs might be a duplicate of
the other.
The major problem with "Order Received" (other than the new, ugly column of byte 
offets that can be displayed) is when it is used for looking at a folder other 
than the Inbox -- or even the Inbox itself -- that messages have been dragged to 
in who-knows-what order.  "Order Received" becomes, essentially, "Order placed 
in this folder."

I think parsing the date out of the first Received header (from the client's 
server) is better than the Date header, just because the server's clock is 
likely to be more reliable than whatever the sender's client uses for Date 
(sometimes deliberately misleading, thus this bug).

I just confirmed bug 190337, which explicitly asks for the mail client to add a 
Received header when the mail arrives.  As I noted there, I'm not sure how this 
applies to IMAP, or that it's necessarily more reliable or useful than the 
server's Received date.
See bug 200802, about using 'received' date to time automatic deletion of junk
mail, rather than the Date: header.
I think there is a kind of received date header. If I open any mail (POP
aacount) in Sorce-View I get always the first line like that

From - Fri Jul 18 23:10:06 2003

witch seems to be the received date. Parsing this migth been difficutly since
'normal' header lines contains a colon to seperate Header name from its content.
*** Bug 229152 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Where does the date in the first line of the source view come from?
This line is not available for IMAP messages though, which is understandable
since the messages live on the server and the client can't change the data
(without uploading it to the server afterwards).
I agree with comment #11. The last Recieved header from the server is usually
reliable enough for most purposes.
*** Bug 242192 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #11)
All we want the default setting to be the menu item> View> Sort by> Order
Recieved > Decending.

No other discussion is necessary
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
I just noticed this bug when I recieved a email from a client that did not 
include the Date: header.  Since TB uses this as its received timestamp (what 
were you guys thinking?), and there is not one, it gets displayed as recieved 
13/31/1969 4:00pm.  Of course this goes to the bottom of my inbox and I have 
to go looking for the newly received email.
After discovering how many bugs (and duplicate bugs) of this issue have been 
submitted, and how long it has been an open issue, I am truly floored that 
this has not already been resolved.  C'mon guys....Are you going to let this 
one get the better of you and let the Mozilla faithful down?  I won't pretend 
I know how this would be resolved but it can't be that difficult if all the 
other email clients are already sorting on recieved timestamp.
Assignee: sspitzer → mail
(In reply to comment #17)
> (In reply to comment #11)

I have many many folders and having to change this for every folder after the mail client locks up as it does at least oce a month.  When I then reopen it all the settings are returned to default casuing me to have to repeat this step a couple of hundred times with 4 email address and hundreds of folders in 2 of them alone.  I also have to do this for every new folder I create.

This simpleton solution is rediculously time consuming and very maddening on each occaision.  I have missed many emails that I belatedly found after a couple of days as I found time to re sort my hundreds of folders.

I have talk with many and they agree sorting by order received is what they always prefer as the default and to make this the default option would be the best solution.

An entry in the prference window to change this to another default would be a second step if there are a few disorganised people who have no care about such matters.  
You can now choose this with the received date column - bug 166254. Problem resolved?
QA Contact: laurel
(In reply to comment #20)
> You can now choose this with the received date column - bug 166254. Problem
> resolved?
> 

I don't see how to do this at all ... is it only in the nightly build?
Yes the received date column is only available in the nightly builds - http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/
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