Date in Thunderbird

[Guerri Stevens]

I downloaded and installed Thunderbird today. I am hoping that another T-bird user can help me. I notice that in the display of messages in the In Box, for example, one of the fields is the date. All I see there is the time, no date. Admittedly the only messages I have so far are for today (June 5), but I think I should be seeing the date anyway.

And yes, I can widen the field as much as I want, but the date doesn't appear.

I have also looked through all the settings without spotting anything that says "the format of the date is time only" or "here is where you set the format". I must have overlooked something.

Guerri

[heimerson]

Guerri,

Thunderbird only shows the time for messages on the current day. At least that's the way it works for me on both Windoze and Linux.

Russ

[Judy G. Russell]

Thunderbird gives you time only for messages from today and date on all others.

[Mike]

As others have suggested, only the time is shown for messages less than 24 hours old. However, there are some tweaks and extensions to modify that behavior, if you want to roll up your sleeves and get techie. :-)

[Guerri Stevens]

Russ, Judy, and Mike,

In my opinion, the display in the date field should ALWAYS be the same. I can't imagine why it would be an advantage to be otherwise.

And Mike the troublemaker: how techie to change it?

Guerri

[Guerri Stevens]

Mike, I have another Thunderbird question. Today I found a description of how to make a signature which can be automatically stuck onto my messages. The only problem is that the instructions bear no resemblance to my Thunderbird setup.

I think the reason is that I am using global folders. Are automatic signatures not available for that setup?

[Mike]

And Mike the troublemaker: how techie to change it?
You'll need to carefully edit the file user.js in the Thunderbird profile, and add a line to tell T-bird how you'd like the date/time to be displayed.

The entry to add to the file is described at MozillaZine (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Change_the_Date_Format).

Do you need help finding the profile?

[Mike]

Hmmm... I'm not sure whether there's anything to prevent use of a signature.

I'm not familar with "global folders." Do you mean you told T-bird to use a Global Inbox in the Local Folders Account?

[Guerri Stevens]

Mike, I don't know exactly what I told T-bird except to use "global". Possibly I have the terminology wrong and it's really "Global Inbox". OK, yes, I just looked up the stuff I printed on moving the folders and it says "Global Inbox".

Anyway, I can see in the Account Settings under Composition and Addressing the place where you'd put the information on the signature, but it's grayed out. There is one of these for each Email account, by the way, so if I were allowed to use it, presumably I could have a different signature for each one.

Do you think I should tell it to not use the global inbox, and if so, how? I searched for a setting for that but couldn't find one.

I'm starting to think I should get some other Email client, one that has built-in documentation.

[Guerri Stevens]

I know where the profile is, and I saw the .js file.

I don't know what's at MozillaZine, but I saw something about what could go into the file, and it was not clear, or maybe I didn't read far enough. For now I will just live with it the way it is.

[Mike]

I searched all over MozillaZine, and a lot of people are using the Global Inbox, with signatures. I searched through the documentation about signatures to see if some sort of side-effect of some other setting would disable the ability to set a signature, and I can't find anything. I'm not sure what else to suggest.

[Guerri Stevens]

I've got my signatures. Pilot error- I was given the correct instructions, I think, but was not understanding exactly what had to be done.