Hi James,
> When I import mail from eudora into the BAT, all of the messages
> have the same creation and received dates which makes it difficult
> to organize past messages. Is there some way around this???
Is the date shown in TB the date you did the import? Does this
happen only to messages in the Outbox (=Sent folder in TB). There're
three posibilities: some information is missing from the original
mailbox, there's a bug in TB's import wizard, or Eudora doesn't
format it right (I know some early versions of Eudora didn't).
Let's start with the received date. Eudora stores mail in .mbx file
which should be in unix mailbox format, where each message starts
with a "From" line. Note this "From" line is different from the
"From:" field in the message header (the latter has a colon, as does
every other header field). Please take a look at your .mbx files
with a text editor, you should see Eudora formats it as the
following:
>From ???@??? Sun Jul 2 23:56:35 2000
If you have used Eudora for a long time, there might be some
variation in the format of date/time (e.g., the year may be in two
digits).
During import, TB expects the date/time in the exact order: day of
week, month, day of month, time, and year (and NO time zone), where
year must have 4 digits, otherwise TB would display the wrong date.
If the .mbx is indeed formatted correctly, and TB is showing the
date of import as the received date, then there's a bug in TB's
import wizard so it's not picking up the information.
There's an easy work-around, thankfully. You may import the .mbx as
"From Unix Mailboxes", instead of the Import Wizard. The downside of
this approach is you have to import them one by one. If you want to
keep the folder structure, then you may want to use the Import
Wizard first, then delete the messages, and reimport individual .mbx
files as unix mailboxes. I know, it's a pain. I don't mind if you
want to file a complaint to RIT. :)
Now, the creation date. If TB shows the date of import as the
creation date for received mail, then the "Date:" field is missing
from the headers of the original messages. It happens, albeit
rarely. There's nothing we can do about it if the sender's email
program didn't provide this information. The closest thing you can
do is to recreate the "Date:" field with the date from the earliest
"Received:" (bottom-most) field. (There should be one or more
"Received:" field at the top of a message header, added by each
server along the way.) It may not worth the trouble for old mail,
though.
If TB is showing a unreasonable date (like year 2037), then the
"Date:" is not formatted in the right order, which should be like:
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 00:58:23 -0500
where the order is different from the above example: day of week,
day of month, month, year, time and time zone. (Note the day of
month is BEFORE the month). There may be a time zone description at
the end, like PST, which should be OK.
At least some versions of Eudora is not formatting the "Date:" field
right for sent messages (it shouldn't touch the headers of received
mail).
HTH.
--
Best regards,
Ming-Li mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
I'm troubled by the same problem, and I'm afraid there is no
easy solution before RIT fix it. There are two not so
elegant fixes, however.
1. Ignore the received date, and use the created date
instead. Given the speed email is transmitted these days,
these two dates should be pretty close.
2. If he has a text editor with macro capability, like
Ultraedit, he may use TB's "export to Unix mailbox" function
to export all messages in a folder to a file. The file is
in plain text format, and could be edited with an editor.
Then he may use a macro to change the date with the "actual"
received date. If he is familiar with VBA, he could do it
in MS Word as well, though it's a bit overkill. After that,
he can re-import the messages (as from Unix mailbox, not OE)
again, the TB should show the right date.
I also find it amusing about TB's implementation of this
"received date/time" -- it's the date/time TB fetches the
mail from your server. Instead, some other email client
(like OE) use the date/time the message arrives at your mail
server, as recorded on the header (the "Date:" field).
I don't think either approach is "right" or "wrong". It's
just a matter of preference.
--
Best regards,
Ming-Li
Using The Bat! 1.46 Beta/1 under Win2k
--
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