Email times displayed as UTC

Question

Level 1

8 points

Email times displayed as UTC

Hi,
I'm having a weird display issue in Mail. All emails show in the list with times that are UTC instead of PDT. My date and time and international system preferences are correctly set to display Pacific Daylight time (Los Angeles) in standard American date format. Apple Mail is the only program that isn't obeying that setting.

To make this more interesting, I've configured Mail in a non-standard way. Since there's no obvious way to lock out access to Mail other than to create a separate user account (which doesn't meet our needs for this system), I created an encrypted sparse disk image and moved ~/Library/Mail/ into that disk image. I then created a symbolic link to point ~/Library/Mail/ to the disk image volume.

This work around is working out perfectly and provides me a way to secure access to email without creating a unique user account. The only funky thing appears to be this date display issue.

I know that the disk image implementation is non-standard and probably not recommended, but it's the only way I could figure out how to secure access to my mail within a shared single user account (which I need for other reasons).

Any ideas on how to correct this date display issue?

Thank you,
Todd

iMac Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jul 16, 2007 11:32 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 17, 2007 3:49 AM in response to TS250

The time zone in the topmost header you posted uses a format that was deprecated six years ago (it should use a “+/- HHMM” offset to specify the time zone — see RFC 2822 - Internet Message Format), but Mail should (and AFAIK does) correctly convert such times to local time when displaying them to the user, so not sure what’s going on here...

Have you really posted the latest (topmost) Received headers of that message? Don’t you see any other Received headers above those when you look at the raw source of the message?

If you tell Mail to display the Date Sent column (which corresponds to the Date message header), does Mail display the time correctly there?

What type of mail account is this (POP, IMAP)? Do you have other mail accounts? Does the same happen with all of them?

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Answer 2

Dimaxum

Level 5

5,997 points

Jan 29, 2008 9:05 AM in response to TS250

Posted this a view day's ago, but no response.

The same here, ALL of my sending an in-coming mail messages are displayed in am. 8.42

I don't think that this has anything to do with time zones.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1348250&tstart=0

Any comment to this, or a solution to get it right again.

Thanks in advance ...

Dimaxum

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Answer 3

Jul 16, 2007 1:04 PM in response to TS250

Hi Todd.

Could you please more accurately describe what the problem actually is? What is it exactly that Mail is displaying where and what is it that you would expect to see there? Which exactly is the System Preferences > International setting that Mail isn’t obeying? Have you chosen the right Closest City in System Preferences > Date & Time > Time Zone? More info, please.

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Answer 4

TS250 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 16, 2007 2:04 PM in response to David Gimeno Gost

Hi David. Thanks for you help. In the mail viewer window, the "Date Received" column displays date and times for emails that are UTC instead of local. I'm not sure the International preference has anything to do with it. In Date and Time, the timezone is set to Los Angeles, which correctly sets the clock at the top right of the finder window and also seems to correctly set all aspects of system time. However, Apple Mail is not displaying the date received in my local time, but rather in UTC.

Mac OS X (10.4.10)

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Answer 5

Jul 16, 2007 2:16 PM in response to TS250

You’re welcome, but it remains unclear what the problem really is. Using a particular message as an example, what exactly does Mail display in the Date Received column and what exactly would you expect to see there instead?

The date & time that Mail shows in the Date Received column is the date & time that appears in the latest (topmost) message’s Received header (which you can see doing View > Message > Long Headers), and is set by the recipient’s incoming mail server. What do you see there?

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Answer 6

TS250 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 16, 2007 9:23 PM in response to David Gimeno Gost

If a message arrived at 3:15pm today Pacific Daylight Time, I would expect the received column to display "Today 3:15 PM". Instead, it displays "Today 10:15 PM". All messages are exactly 7 hours ahead of my local time, which is also the time zone for GMT/UCT.

Here's an excerpt from the raw source headers of a sample message that came in (some addresses and domains have been changed to protect the innocent):

Received: from p03c11m007.symantecmail.net (mxl144v243.mxlogic.net [208.65.144.243])
by x1.net (8.13.6.20060614/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l6GKAvBC024651
for <x@y.com>; Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:10:58 GMT
Received: from unknown [66.249.82.228] (EHLO wx-out-0506.google.com)
by p03c11m007.symantecmail.net (mxl_mta-2.14.0-16)
with ESMTP id 2d0db964.1623272368.11950.p03c11m007.symantecmail.net (envelope-from <user@gmail.com>);
Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:10:58 -0600 (MDT)
Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id t11so1316490wxc
for <x@y.com>; Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:10:57 -0700 (PDT)

While this came in at 1:10 PM my time, the "Date Received" column in Mail shows "Today 8:10 PM" - which is also 20:10 GMT per the message headers.

So my issue is, why is Mail displaying all messages at GMT time as opposed to my local time (GMT - 0700)?

Thanks,
Todd

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Answer 7

TS250 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 17, 2007 11:15 AM in response to David Gimeno Gost

Following is the full header for another sample message. I have other accounts on this server that I check on other computers using Apple Mail and time displays properly, so I doubt it has anything to do with the email server. This is a POP account and the server runs some flavor of BSD running sendmail/postfix or something similar. While the sample below was sent from MS Exchange, the date display issue applies to the display of all messages.

The following message appears with Date Received: "Today 3:35 AM".

The Date Sent column displays: "Yesterday 8:35 PM"

The date sent is correctly showing the message time for our time zone. For some reason, date received is showing messages at GMT.

Thanks again for taking a look at this.

Todd

Return-Path: <user@irell.com>
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on x.net
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL autolearn=ham
version=3.1.3
Received: from p03c11m003.symantecmail.net (mxl144v243.mxlogic.net [208.65.144.243])
by x.net (8.13.6.20060614/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l6H3Ztm4095850
for <x@y.com>; Tue, 17 Jul 2007 03:35:56 GMT
Received: from unknown [64.168.126.9] (EHLO nbmailg.irell.com)
by p03c11m003.symantecmail.net (mxl_mta-2.14.0-16)
with ESMTP id c193c964.275209136.8973.p03c11m003.symantecmail.net (envelope-from <user@irell.com>);
Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:35:56 -0600 (MDT)
X-WSS-ID: 0JLB0P0-03-3NN-01
Received: from ccexch2k01.imnt.irell.net (unknown [128.100.1.242]) by nbmailg.irell.com (Tumbleweed
MailGate) with ESMTP id 279B7100692C0 for <x@y.com>; Mon, 16 Jul 2007
20:36:36 -0700 (PDT)
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
Content-class: urn:content-classes:message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=us-ascii
Subject: RE: Queen Bee Waxing
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:35:54 -0700
Message-ID: <7A0CB3B4ED744A4A820CAC6896591F2FEE8B59@ccexch2k01.imnt.irell.net>
In-Reply-To: <16B4B77B-6C6B-4FE3-962D-D3C1A5E746EC@y.com>
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Thread-Topic: 1234
Thread-Index: AcfH0xjxzwFUuPXmRfO1k1JK4W4zNwAT/IMQ
From: "fn, ln" <user@irell.com>
To: "fn1 ln1" <x@y.com>
X-Spam: [F=0.5000000000; BMI=0.500(none); SC=none]
X-MAIL-FROM: <user@irell.com>
X-SOURCE-IP: [64.168.126.9]
X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA==
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by x.net id l6H3Ztm4095850
Status:

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Answer 8

Jul 17, 2007 11:46 AM in response to TS250

I don’t know what’s going on here. Even though the incoming mail server shouldn’t write the time in the topmost Received header the way it does, Mail should still be able to convert it back to your local timezone. For some reason that escapes me, Mail appears to be ignoring the GMT qualifier and treating the time that appears in the topmost Received header as if it was in your local timezone...

> I have other accounts on this server that I check on other computers

using Apple Mail and time displays properly

Well, in that case two obvious things to try would be (1) setting up this account on one of the other computers, and/or (2) setting up one of the other accounts on this computer...

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Answer 9

DeeperD

Level 1

0 points

Jul 17, 2007 8:52 PM in response to David Gimeno Gost

Todd and David,

Wanted to let you know I am having the same problem except I am in Central time zone so it's a five hour difference. Started happening a couple weeks ago. It's with one of my POP accounts. All other accounts on my machine work fine. And I don't have any special setup for my mail like Todd. Just standard install. Hope someone can help us with this.

Tim

Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

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Answer 10

lenzaq

Level 1

0 points

Sep 5, 2007 9:55 PM in response to TS250

Hi,

My computer is doing the same thing, and I've noticed this for some time, myself. For instance, I just received an email from a POP account that claims it was received at 4:14am 9/06/07. [Note the time of this post].

It only happens to messages in my "inbox" and not to messages that I apply rules to, removing them to another box. Also, "sent" box displays correctly.

Note: I've checked my POP account online (usa.net), and the displayed times are correct. They just don't translate in my inbox.

Thanks,
Leonard

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Answer 11

aaz125

Level 1

0 points

Nov 30, 2007 10:03 PM in response to lenzaq

One more person having same problem, in Mountain Time Zone. Nothing unusual in my Mail setup. The time received shown in my inbox is UTC; when I actually open the message, the time received is my local time. No other weird time things going on in my computer. Not sure when it began. It's rather irritating, sometime it causes the day to be wrong because of midnight. Has no one found a fix?

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Answer 12

Jan 29, 2008 7:36 AM in response to TS250

I'm having the exact same issue. The Date Received Column is showing the UTC time, but the messages themselves (i.e. the message headers) look fine.

I've checked and rechecked Date & Time Settings, International Settings, etc. The remarkable thing about this OSX Mail install was that I had to downgrade from Leopard (long story involving Office 2004).

That said, any help is appreciated!

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Answer 13

Feb 16, 2008 3:33 AM in response to TS250

I observe similar anomaly with only one of my Mail accounts:

- it started several Mac OS X updated ago, not exactly sure when
- +Date Received+ Time stamp on received e-mails from this account shows (at the moment) 1 hour earlier than actual time
- that time difference was more hours before we returned from daylight saving time
- i am located in Europe, Zurich, Time Zone is set to Zurich, CET
- only on this account is *POP mail server* in USA, rest (correct) accounts are with *European mail servers*
- Windows Outlook reads that account with correct time stamps
- Mac OS X and Mail (2.1.3) are at latest versions

I can include here more information, headers, for example, if anyone has an idea...

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Answer 14

vladot

Level 1

0 points

Feb 13, 2008 6:46 PM in response to DeeperD

Hi,

Same here: standard install and UTC time shown as local in the "Date Received" field. Help!? It is very annoying to have all my emails as received 6 hours in the future.

Vladimir

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Answer 15

Dimaxum

Level 5

5,997 points

Feb 16, 2008 9:27 AM in response to Dimitar Ratchev

Hi Dimitar ...

Did you check the system preferences >Universal settings ?? I did an solved the problem.

See my link in earlier post ...

Dimaxum

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