502741 - Message received time sometimes changes when forwarded, it is changed to the time zone display of the original sender's timezone

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Andrew Litkowiak]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.22

The date stamp format of a message is changing when forwarded. When a message arrives, the date stamp is viewed in the receiver's time zone display. However, when I forward that message (inline), the date stamp changes to represent the time zone display of the ORIGINAL SENDER'S SERVER setting and/or location. The "New" date stamp does display the time zone code. The net effect to the casual observer is to change the PERCEIVED date stamp, unless that person is very much on the ball. The net effect in our office is devastating each month at the 1st when we use date stamps to determine application receipt cut offs.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Forward a message for another time zone, using inline option.
2.Observe difference between received message date stamp and that same date stamp in the forwarded version.
3.
Actual Results:  
Original date stamp in received message (formatted to receiver time zone) visually changes to SENDER'S time zone date stamp.

Expected Results:  
Software should retain the appearance as it is in the receiver's inbox.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I've just tried this using Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1pre) Gecko/20090706 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0b3pre.

The date stamp doesn't get changed from the sender's message, Thunderbird does display the date stamp of the message in the receiver's time zone.

So for example, I'm currently in BST. I've received a message which is displaying as 00:15. When I select the message, and go to View -> Message Source, I see the actual date as:

Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 16:15:56 -0700

When I subsequently forward that message, I see the date:

Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 16:15:56 -0700

This includes the timezone with the time zone code.

Therefore we are retaining it as the original message, just showing it in the local timezone when we display it to the receiver.

I do notice if you forward as an attachment and open the .eml attachment, then the email is shown in the receiver's format.

Comment 2

[Andrew Litkowiak]

To Mark Banner:

I think you may be missing the point. Use a message that originated in different time zone, forward that message inline, not as an eml attachment. The original message in your inbox shows the date stamp translated into your own time zone, yet when forwarded, that same date stamp converts/reverts to the origin time zone.

The main point is that the visual appearance of the forwarded message no longer matches the visual appearance of the message in your inbox. This is especially troublesome if the final recipient is trying to coordinate with the person forwarding the message.

Consistency!!!! We need the format to remain consistent.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

I agree we need consistency. However, if you forward an email to someone not in your timezone, why should we keep it in your timezone rather than the sender's original timezone?

Comment 4

[Andrew Litkowiak]

Attachment: PDF sample of before and after

Comment 5

[Andrew Litkowiak]

This happens when I forward the message to the guy in the next office.

See attached pdf.

Comment 6

[raoul]

I am having similar problems. When I receive email, the "RECEIVED" headers seem to have the correct time stamp but when it displays on the "DATE" column it is totally different. I don't know what time zone it is based on. THey seem to be 8 hours ahead. This started happening a few days ago. The problem is in my receiving emails and not in the sending. I've already tried to update my Thunderbird and there are no updates at this time. I am using a Win XP.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #3)
> I agree we need consistency. However, if you forward an email to someone not
> in your timezone, why should we keep it in your timezone rather than the
> sender's original timezone?

Comment 8

[Mathew Bittleston]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #7)
The current approach is inconsistent with the way emails are handled when replied to. When you reply to a message, it writes the date and time in the time zone of the person replying (as expected):
On 11/15/2013 4:08 PM, John Doe wrote:
....

However, when forwarding that same email in-line, the result is confusing:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	RE: ...
Date: 	Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:08:40 +0000
From: 	John Doe ....

I think it is expected that the date written is the date and time _in the time zone of the person forwarding or replying_. The forward or reply is written from the perspective of that person, so the date should be consistent. This is how all other email clients I've used work.

Comment 10

[Frank Breitling]

I can confirm this bug.
Please change the status to confirmed.

Comment 11

[Frank Breitling]

I don't know what "Whiteboard: [wontfix?]" means but it sounds wrong to me and should be changed.
It is a serious bug that is creating wrong email headers and a lot of confusion for many years.
A solution is overdue and hence very urgent!

Comment 12

[joschu]

Please confirm this bug!!!

Steps to reproduce:

1.) Use a mail in Thunderbird that has a Date-Field with a different timezone than yours.
This can easily be done by dropping a mail out of Thunderbird, edit the Date field from let's say...
  Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2018 15:02:21 +0000
...to...
  Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2018 15:02:21 +0200
...and drop the edited .eml back into Thunderbird.

2.) Mark the mail, answer it.
Note the corrected time information, that resembles YOUR local time.
Cancel.

3.) Mark the mail, forward it inline.
Note the technical notation of the timestamp with timezone information, untranslated.
Cancel.

Please let me add that this behaviour raised quite some misunderstanding in time-critical communication in the past.
Regular users DO NOT pay attention to this uncommon time zone notation and read the time WRONG!

Thank you.

Comment 14

[Machiel]

I can confirm this issue.

We have users informing about this issue. They highly prefer having the time to be converted to the local timezone. The current method creates confusion for the users.

Comment 15

[joeyborg]

I have the same issue.
So this problem is known since at least 9 years and there's no fix?
i just can't imagine that...

Comment 16

[Frank Breitling]

Yes, its very hard to imagine like so many other things that human do or don't do...
And surprisingly not many care either.
This issue got only 1 vote in 9 years (which is mine).

Comment 17

[joeyborg]

That's why I just registered.
Where can I vote?

Comment 18

[joeyborg]

(In reply to joeyborg from comment #17)
> That's why I just registered.
> Where can I vote?

*Found it!

Comment 19

[Frank Breitling]

Now I have created bug #1473527 as an attempt to get the status of this bug changed to confirmed and draw more attention to it.

Comment 21

[joeyborg]

So what can we do to get this bug fixed?

Comment 22

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

All,

Your interest in Thunderbird is great, and your frustration with this issue understandable - but this bug is one small fish in a big ocean, and to be completely honest relative to many other bugs just not that important.  It's not like developers are idle - https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/60.0beta/releasenotes/ is just a small taste of what is going into version 60.

To answer the question "what can we do to get this bug fixed?", I don't see that any additional information or encouragement needed to get this fixed. Bugs that are not critical tend to get fixed when a developer has some spare time and takes a likeing to the issue - both quite rare.  Until that happens, please refrain from posting "me too" comments in bug reports. In that regard, please see and abide by https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html   Thanks.

Comment 23

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

With regard to the unconfirmed status, it is unclear that a patch would be accepted per comment 3, so the bug has not be marked confirmed. And thus the whiteboard notation [wontfix?].

If you feel the need to discuss policy or ask how bugzilla works, please discuss at mozilla.support.thunderbird newsgroup

Comment 24

[Frank Breitling]

Seems like a misunderstanding.
The time received of the message changes (sometimes) when it is forwarded. This is inconsistent and confirmed.
So the bug status needs to be updated accordingly in order for somebody to look at it and this is all what people are requesting here.

Comment 25

[joeyborg]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #23)
> With regard to the unconfirmed status, it is unclear that a patch would be
> accepted per comment 3, so the bug has not be marked confirmed. And thus the
> whiteboard notation [wontfix?].
> 
> If you feel the need to discuss policy or ask how bugzilla works, please
> discuss at mozilla.support.thunderbird newsgroup

Thanks for your quick answer.
As posted in comment 5, this issue also occurs when sender and reciever are in the same timezone.
As posted in comment 12, this bug causes misunderstandings, so I wouldn't say it's that unimportant either.

Comment 26

[Markus Lankeit]

I keep running across this... Best I can tell, "forwards" simply use the headers "Date:" as stamped by the sending mailhost.  There was a question earlier as to why mail should not be kept in the sender's timezone, and this sounds OK in theory... but theory and practice often differ.  For example, a number of large mailservers, like yahoo and amazon stamp everything with +0000 offset.  Now, it is beyond me why any business with most of their user base in the USA would do this, but they do--by contrast, Google does not stamp everything in UTC.  So, this theory that it is OK to accept the sending mailserver's datestamp does not work in practice, because it assumes that everybody configures mailservers to match their user's timezone, but that is just not true.  As a result, I often get time-sensitive email from people within 3 hours of me, but because I'm -0900, many of these cross a date border, and that just causes confusion.  Finally, to really answer the "why mail should not be kept in the sender's timezone" proposal, consider the date column in the message list pane displaying the sending mailserver's datestamp.  It would be extremely confusing to make sense of your inbox in this scenario.  Having it so for "forwards" makes just as little sense.

To make matters more confusing, "replies" behave differently (hope this clarifies the previous inconsistency question).  I'm not sure what replies use, but it seems to be the same date that shows in the message list pane in the "Date" column (also, no offset is displayed on "replies", but "forwards" display an offset).  So, if I take the same message and "forward" it vs "reply," I get a different date/time displayed.  

It would really be helpful to have date/time be consistent between "replies" and "forwards."  I submit that the behavior currently on "replies" is the correct one to use.  Another option is to have a setting where one could specify localtime or mailserver time to be used.

Comment 28

[Frank Breitling]

Greetings everybody,

after more than 10 years this bug gets finally confirmed!

How I did it?
I filed bug report #1508132 "No way to get bugs confirmed by users" and learned that we all could have done it by adding the "canconfirm" privilege. However, this is a well hidden feature. So I am telling you now how to do it:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/QA/Confirming_unconfirmed_bugs

Cheers!

Comment 29

[luiscla27]

Attachment: Bug 1507949, HEADERS (fwd, sent and received).zip

Added details referred at bug 1507949:
- Sent from Thunderbird (EML)
- Received at Thunderbird (EML)
- Received at Outlook (MSG & HEADERS)
- Video showing the behaviour

Comment 30

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Gene, do you have any experience in this area?

Comment 31

[gene smith]

I've never really thought much about this area or have any idea right now how it actually works and never noticed a big problem.

But looking at the various complaints, I don't know if I exactly understand what the problem really is. Some indicate that the forwarded message has the wrong timezone. I'm not sure where they are looking to see the timezone, i.e., is the summary line or the "All" headers display or are they looking at something in the full "message source"?

I just forwarded a message received at 3/1/19 6:07PM on gmail to another account. The original message had headerDate: Fri, 1 Mar 2019 15:07:27 -0800. (My timezone EDT is -0400, I think.) The account that received the forwarded message now has Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2019 18:03:38 -0400. (I am looking at headers using the View "All" headers selection.) In the body of the forwarded message at the receiving account I see:

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	khalid_zh14, see what's been happening on Instagram
Date: 	Fri, 1 Mar 2019 15:07:27 -0800
From: 	Instagram <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: 	Instagram <[e-mail]>
To: 	[e-mail]

So this sounds right to me. If not, can someone tell me what I am overlooking or what should be seen?

Comment 32

[gene smith]

(In reply to Markus Lankeit from comment #26)

I keep running across this... Best I can tell, "forwards" simply use the
headers "Date:" as stamped by the sending mailhost. There was a question
earlier as to why mail should not be kept in the sender's timezone, and this
sounds OK in theory... but theory and practice often differ. For example, a
number of large mailservers, like yahoo and amazon stamp everything with
+0000 offset.

I also don't see a problem with yahoo when I forward a message inline. The header yahoo puts in is a lot longer but the original timestamp and zone seem to stay mostly intact. The X-Apparently-To line seems to "zero base" the timezone which moves the day from Sun to Mon but the Date: header keeps the original message day, date and timezone:Sun, 7 Jan 2018 23:32:26 -0500.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
X-Apparently-To: 	*****@yahoo.com; Mon, 08 Jan 2018 04:32:46 +0000 <---zero based timestamp
Return-Path: 	<************@charter.net>
Received-SPF: 	pass (domain of charter.net designates **.***.***.** as permitted sender)
:
<snip lots of lines>
:
From: 	gds <************@charter.net>
Subject: 	see if printfs
To: 	[e-mail]
Message-ID: 	<[e-mail]>
Date: 	Sun, 7 Jan 2018 23:32:26 -0500                                   <---original timestamp intact!
User-Agent: 	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:59.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/59.0a1
MIME-Version: 	1.0
Content-Type: 	text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Language: 	en-US
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 	7bit
Content-Length: 	41

Not sure if there is an amazon public mailserver. Maybe the reporter meant AOL? If so, AOL uses the same servers as Yahoo, I think.

Comment 33

[Alfred Peters [:infofrommozilla]]

(In reply to gene smith from comment #31)

But looking at the various complaints, I don't know if I exactly understand what the problem really is.

See Bug 1507949 Comment #1

In the headerpane we transfer the date header to the local timezone. But in the forwarded mail we use the date with the original timezone. This might be suprising to the regular user, especially if he doesn't know anything about timezones.

The question is: should we (optionally) transfer the timezone to the local one in the forwarded mail?

Pro: Most users mail only to recipients in their own timezone. It would make things more comfortable for them.

Con: If a user mails to international recipients, it would make thinks worse.

Comment 34

[Frank Breitling]

To keep this discussion simple:

Dates in reply headers are the same as those shown in the message list pane.
Dates in forward headers can be different.
So the solution is to show the same date in forward headers as in the reply headers.

To reproduce this problem open the attached mail502741.eml in Thunderbird and

1. click on reply and
2. click on forward.

Results are:

On 22/04/2019 08:39, Bugzilla@Mozilla wrote:

Do not reply to this email. You can add comments to this bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502741

Comment # 33 on Bug 502741 from Alfred Peters at 2019-04-21 23:39:09 PDT

(In reply to gene smith from comment #31)

But looking at the various complaints, I don't know if I exactly understand what the problem really is.

:

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: [Bug 502741] Message received time sometimes changes when forwarded, it is changed to the time zone display of the original sender's timezone
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2019 06:39:11 +0000
From: Bugzilla@Mozilla <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]

Do not reply to this email. You can add comments to this bug at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502741

Comment # 33 on Bug 502741 from Alfred Peters at 2019-04-21 23:39:09 PDT

(In reply to gene smith from comment #31)

But looking at the various complaints, I don't know if I exactly understand what the problem really is.

:

Comment 35

[Frank Breitling]

Attachment: mail502741.eml

Attachment to comment 34.

Comment 36

[gene smith]

(In reply to Frank Breitling from comment #34)

To keep this discussion simple:

Dates in reply headers are the same as those shown in the message list pane.
Dates in forward headers can be different.
So the solution is to show the same date in forward headers as in the reply headers.

To reproduce this problem open the attached mail502741.eml in Thunderbird and

1. click on reply and
2. click on forward.

Results are:

On 22/04/2019 08:39, Bugzilla@Mozilla wrote:

When I reply to your attached message I see this as the first line:

On 4/22/19 2:39 AM, Bugzilla@Mozilla wrote:

So my assumption is that bugzilla sent the message at 2:39 in the morning at my local time (EDT) or -0400 I think. And looking at the file that is right.

Now when I forward your attached message I see the full header inline in the email (sorry so long but want to show it all like a use would see it):

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Return-Path: 
<[e-mail]>
Received: 	from a58-226.smtp-out.us-west-2.amazonses.com 
([54.240.58.226]) by mx-ha.gmx.net (mxgmx112 [212.227.17.5]) with ESMTPS 
(Nemesis) id 0MEsCs-1h3bZb14oM-00G1cL for <[e-mail]>; Mon, 
22 Apr 2019 08:39:13 +0200
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From: 	Bugzilla@Mozilla <[e-mail]>
To: 	[e-mail]
Subject: 	[Bug 502741] Message received time sometimes changes when 
forwarded, it is changed to the time zone display of the original 
sender's timezone
Date: 	Mon, 22 Apr 2019 06:39:11 +0000
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Do not reply to this email. You can add comments to this bug at 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502741

*Comment # 33 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502741#c33> 
on Bug 502741 <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=502741> from 
Alfred Peters <mailto:[e-mail]> at 2019-04-21 23:39:09 
PDT *

(In reply to gene smith from comment #31 <#c31>)

     But looking at the various complaints, I don't know if I exactly
     understand what the problem really is.
:

In the very complex and not user friendly inline header that tb includes, the timestamp appears twice (and maybe more for other examples). Is the recommendation to change so in all places in the displayed header it is adjusted to local timezone of where the tb user is located?

Is the recommendation to change the displayed header where timestamps occur to be just like when a reply occurs, i.e.,

(Nemesis) id 0MEsCs-1h3bZb14oM-00G1cL for <[e-mail]>; Mon, 
22 Apr 2019 08:39:13 +0200

displays as

(Nemesis) id 0MEsCs-1h3bZb14oM-00G1cL for <[e-mail]>; 
4/22/19 2:39 AM

and

Date: 	Mon, 22 Apr 2019 06:39:11 +0000

displays as

Date: 4/22/19 2:39 AM

If this is what is wanted, we need a definite and specific specification of how the adjusted timestamp(s) should appear (just like reply? or rfc standard timestamp like Mon, 22 Apr 2019 02:39:11 -0400?, or something else?).
Finally, I would assume the proposal would be not for tb to actually change the forwarded header information (which is quoted from the original message) but to only change what appears on the user's screen.

Comment 37

[Frank Breitling]

I assume your forwarded header is so long because you set View->Headers->All.

In case somebody wants to forward all header information he might want to preserve the timezone information as well.
And generally it might be good to preserve the timezone information and not to change any timestamp where it occurs.
Instead one could add the local timestamp to the fist line of the forward header in the same way as it happens for replies.

So one could change

-------- Forwarded Message --------
:

to

-------- Forwarded Message from 4/22/19 8:39 AM --------
:

I think that would reduce the apparent timestamp inconsistency.

I would also prefer to see seconds in the timestamp in both forward and reply headers.

Comment 38

[gene smith]

Yes, I had "all" headers set while testing this. I don't use forwarding of messages much and didn't know "all" would cause so much header info to be pasted into the message.

So you are saying to convert the original message's simple "Date:" header to local format (including seconds) and put it in the title line. Seems like a good idea and fairly easy to do (famous last words). This would not require changing the actual printed header information below the title line in possibly more than one place. Also update the "reply" title timestamp to add seconds.

I will look into this ASAP.

Comment 39

[gene smith]

Well, I've looked at the compose related code some and I can't seem to understand how it works. Maybe someone with more UI related experience should look at this issue. Or maybe someone with more experience could provide some direction to me; that would be appreciated.

I don't know if Bug 1513824 is relevant to this or not. I found it while looking here:
https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/024094c2ebc05723d2b0da86086539d5b97044cb/mail/components/extensions/parent/ext-compose.js#12. The STR for this bug is not really given.

Anyhow, if no help is offered I will continue some more to try and find a solution.

Comment 40

[Frank Breitling]

@Gene Smith Thank you very much for your efforts, useful comments and looking into this problem.
I think you summarized my suggestion very well.
I don't understand Bug 1513824. Its description is very short. So I am sorry I cannot help you with that.

But I had one more thought about compatibility of the suggested format change to the forward header. In case anyone is relying on the exact old format because for example of some message parsing happening in some code, we could consider adding an about:config option to switch the new default format back to the old format to offer an option for 100% backward compatibility.
However, I don't know how important that would be, but maybe something to consider.

Comment 41

[gene smith]

Frank,
Another thing I don't understand is why is this only an issue when emails is forwarded inline? Would not the same issue occur when forwarded as an attachment? I have some emails forwarded to me as attachments that originated from timezone -0600. There is an indication in comment 1 above that timestamp is OK when forwarded as attachment.

When forwarded as attachment you don't see

-------- Forwarded Message --------
:
<body of original message>

instead you see the received forward message like this

--------<Subject of original message>------------

Subject: <Subject of original message>
From: <Who it's from>
Date: 3/29/19 8:31PM  <---converted to your local time
To: <Who it's to>
:
<body of original message>

So looking at the original message Date stamp I see

Date: Fri, 29 Mar 18:31:41 -0600

So correcting for my timezone (add 2 hrs) it would be 8:31PM. So this seems OK.

Possible workaround: Set pref mail.forward_message_mode = 0so tb defaults forwarding to "as an attachment". But I guess other clients still might be forwarding inline so this won't help in that case.

Comment 42

[Frank Breitling]

Gene,
Thank you for pointing this out.
That's very interesting and I don't understand it either, but maybe that is another indication that for inline forwarding something goes wrong. If the same code was used for forwarding inline and as attachment (which should be the case for good code) there should be no difference.
According to the video attached by luiscla27 Microsoft Outlook also converts the forwarded dates to local time.
That doesn't mean that Thunderbird has to do it the same way since timezone information is useful too and keeps forwarded messages unchanged, but local time should at least appear somewhere.
If you could make inline forwarding processed the same way as attached forwarding, this might resolve both issues, the missing local time and the difference between the two forwarding methods, which I find problematic.
Or vice versa make attached forwarding processed like inline forwarding and add the local time to the first line as I suggested in comment 37. Because I think two different forwarding formats can create problems.

Comment 44

[luiscla27]

(In reply to Frank Breitling from comment #42)

According to the video attached by luiscla27 Microsoft Outlook also converts the forwarded dates to local time.
That doesn't mean that Thunderbird has to do it the same way since timezone information is useful too and keeps forwarded messages unchanged, but local time should at least appear somewhere.

The email shown in the video I attached was sent to myself, both accounts are used only from the same timezone. So, my guess is that the issue was related to the server processing the emails (?). I've found the issue first with a mail of a client who's timezone is the same as mine.

(In reply to gene smith from comment #31)

...never noticed a big problem.

I didn't saw the +0000 timezone, I'm not used to do it, nor the client who received the original email. The described behaviour got us confused, and almost got me into trouble as everyone thought I was replying mails 6 hours later.

Comment 45

[lukasz.sellmann]

In latest 115.6.0 version , bug still exists.
Same e-mail forwarded by Roundcube webclient keeps correct timezone.
I observed this Thunderbird behaviour with MsExchange send emails , could be something with "X-MS-Exchange-CrossTenant-originalarrivaltime" ?