Dates backwards

[Charley]

Outlook 2003 gets received date and created date backwards. Dates have been
talked about already in this newsgroup but people seem to confuse this with
various kinds of imported messags. I find it fails even on new messages. I
looked carefully at an internet email that I generated and received.
Outlook 2003 displayed the create date as the received date and vice versa.

Is there a fix for this? I have searched microsofts web sites as well as
various forums and this problem does not seem to be talked about (or even
noticed) and no fix discussed.

Anybody got an answer?

Thanks.
Charley

 

[Diane Poremsky]

are you sure your computer has the correct time?

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/

 

[Charley]

are you sure your computer has the correct time?

Oh yes. As I said, I have looked at the incoming email from the Internet
on the POP server before it is picked up by Outlook 2003. When I do a
send/receive in Outlook 2003 and Outlook gets the mail from the POP
server, Outlook displays the mail with a "Received time" equal to the
Date field of the original Internet email, but the "Created time"
displayed by Outlook is the time that I picked it up, NOT the time the
email was sent. This behavior is new to Outlook 2003. I installed Outlook
2003 2 days ago. Prior to that, I was running Outlook 2000 which worked
perfectly. I immediately noticed as I was looking at the features of
Outlook 2003 that times were all wrong! It took me a little while to
realize that Outlook 2003 was displaying the Created time and the
Received time switched! I am sure this is a BUG in Outlook 2003. I have
examined EVERY setting and none effect this.

If you look at various forums, you will find lots of people complaining
about times. Most are confused and think that the problem is in the
import of mail. That is because they have lots of old mail that they
imported into Outlook 2003 (either Outlook converted from a prior version
or imported from Outlook Express or from another program). What they
discover is that all the dates and times are wrong. The assume the
problem is in the import function. Actually, the problem is only that
Outlook is confused about which field is which. In the past, they most
likely didn't look at the received time (most other mail programs don't
show that). So when they suddenly discover that times are wrong, they are
very confused.

I did a lot of testing in the past couple days and the problem is NOT in
the import, is NOT in my system time, or anything else. The problem IS A
BUG IN OUTLOOK 2003! Either Outlook 2003 is putting the data into the PST
incorrectly and putting the times into the wrong fields of the PST
database, OR Outlook 2003 is displaying and using the fields backwards in
is display portions of the code. I would have to look at the actual code
to know which it is. BUT IN ANY CASE, IT IS A BUG AND IT IS NEW TO
OUTLOOK 2003 (or at least wasn't there in version 2000 and before -- I
don't know about Outlook XP and other versions).

How do we get this info to the right developers at Microsoft to get it
fixed?

-- Charley

 

[Diane Poremsky]

The created time is the time your computer created it- you want the sent and
received time fields if you want to see the time the sender "created" it and
the received time if you want to see when you received it. Depending on how
your email server handles times, the received time is either the time the
server received it in your mailbox or when you downloaded it. If you use
Exchange server or IMAP, where mail is stored on the server, the created
time may be the received time - it really depends on how the server handles
times.

If your previous version used the Sent time in the created field, it was
buggy (unless you are looking at your Sent folder, then it's correct.) The
modified time should be the same as the Created time, unless you modified
the message. Note that autoarchive uses the modified time in deciding what
to archive.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/

 

[Charley]

The created time is the time your computer created it- you want the
sent and received time fields if you want to see the time the sender
"created" it and the received time if you want to see when you
received it. Depending on how your email server handles times, the
received time is either the time the server received it in your
mailbox or when you downloaded it. If you use Exchange server or IMAP,
where mail is stored on the server, the created time may be the
received time - it really depends on how the server handles times.

If your previous version used the Sent time in the created field, it
was buggy (unless you are looking at your Sent folder, then it's
correct.) The modified time should be the same as the Created time,
unless you modified the message. Note that autoarchive uses the
modified time in deciding what to archive.

Sorry Diane but you have it wrong. I am only talking about Internet email
via a POP server, not exchange or IMAP. Also, I am only talking about
email clients Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003, not some "buggy" software.
And I have been using email longer than you can imagine.

Yes, the created time SHOULD be the time you created it -- i.e., if you
look in any Internet email, you will find the the From field, Subject
field, date field (which has both date and time), etc. The date field is
the created time. That's what I SHOULD SEE when I look at the created
time.

(Go into Outlook. Look at any email from the Internet. Make sure you open
in its own window. Go to View menu and select options. You will see the
Internet headers and the various timestamps. The created time is the one
in the Date field of the Internet email.)

That is NOT what Outlook 2003 is showing for the created time. That IS
what Outlook 2003 is showing as the received time!!!!!. What Outlook
2003 is showing as the created time is the the time that Outlook picked
up the mail from the POP server. This is WRONG and BACKWARDS and is
different than every previous version of Outlook that I have used in the
past as well as every other mail client. This is a BUG in Outlook 2003
and explains all the messages on various lists about time problems with
Outlook 2003. As far as I know, this bug is ONLY in Outlook 2003!

Get me in touch with the Outlook 2003 developers and I can explain to
them and they will see the error in their code. Someone has a bug. Either
the person that is putting data into the PST data structures has the
structure definition backwards or he is putting the dates into the wrong
fields. Or else, the rest of Outlook 2003 has the field structures
backwards. In any case, this is a bug! It shouldn't be the case that when
you update from Outlook 2000 to Outlook 2003 that suddenly all the dates
in all your old emails from your previous PST files have the wrong dates.
And new emails that you receive from the Internet, whether generated in
Outlook or in any other client have the wrong dates when displayed in
Outlook. The dates are typically only off a little bit for new emails but
if you look at the created dates and the received date, the created date
should never be later than the received date. It isn't related to my
clock. Try the following experiment in Outlook 2003. Send yourself an
email. Now look at the created date and the receive date. Surprise -- the
created date is later than the received date. Can't be!

Charley

 

[Diane Poremsky]

There is no bug. There is a difference in terminology. The outlook
developers will tell you what I told you - you need to use the Sent field to
see the time the sender sent it, not the Created field. If you prefer to see
the Sent field called Created, then change the name (with the preview pane
off, right click on the row of field names and choose Format columns - you
can change the field display names to anything you want.)

Sent field: the time the sender created it
Received field: the time either you or your mail server received it. Some
mail servers don't use a format Outlook likes so outlook uses the time it
downloads it.
Created time field: the time outlook "took possession" of the message and
added it to the message store.


--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/

 

[Charley]

OH... OK.

Well, what happened to me (and maybe others based on emails I have seen
with confusion on dates, file imports, etc.) is that I upgraded to
Outlook 2003 from Outlook 2000 a couple days ago. Doing that somehow
automatically changed my settings. Where I used to see the preview pane
(now called reading pane) on the bottom, it switched me to the reading
pane on the right. What I then saw on the left was the received time. So
I switched the reading pane to the bottom. Now I tried to use the field
chooser to show what I wanted which was the Internet Date field (i.e.,
the original sender's time). The field chooser showed various field
choices and my eye hit on Created which I (naturally) assumed was the
time that the message had been created by the sender. (I didn't see Sent
probably because I had to scroll down to see it and once I saw Created I
was convinced I had the right field and stopped looking.) Well, as you
have explained, in Outlook Created is actually the time that I received
it, not the time that the sender created it and sent it. That has got to
be one of the worst choices of terminology I have ever seen!

So then, confused that the created time could be later than the received
time, I started searching all the Outlook 2003 options, searching the
help files, searching the Internet, searching Microsoft support web
sites, Microsoft Office Community forums, other forums, Newgroups, etc.
And I did other testing such as sending myself emails and looking at them
on my POP server before downloading. Sure enough, the after downloading
them into Outlook 2003, the "Received" time was the original sender's
time, not the time I received it. That proved there had to a bug. (If
Microsoft hadn't rounded the time to minutes, I would have noticed that
the time being displayed as Received was actually the last server
received time, not the actual sender's time because those times are often
quite close but do differ usually seconds, sometimes longer). I also
didn't find a definition for the various field choices available in
Outlook in the field chooser. Having used email programs of all sorts for
longer than I can count, I was sure Microsoft obviously was now using
Created to mean Sent (or just Date as many Internet email programs use).

Thus you saw the beginning of my attempts to get this bug fix.

Thanks for your help. I did misunderstood your previous response. It did
explain it properly if you interpreted it correctly, but I interpreted it
differently. I interpreted your first line, "The created time is the time
your computer created it", to mean that the time that my computer created
a message to be sent, i.e., the time when I create and send email. I
nodded my head in agreement. Right there you had confirmed what I
expected. Microsoft had obviously changed the terminology and Sent was
now called Created. You then said I wanted the sent and received time
fields. Yes, that is exactly what I wanted. What you meant but I
misunderstood is that I needed to select the "Sent" field from the field
chooser, not the "Created" field from the field chooser. I didn't get
that from your comment probably because I never realized there was both a
Created and a Sent field. After that you started talking about exchange,
IMAP, buggy programs etc. I completely missed what you were saying.

I must appologize for misunderstanding. This last email made it quite
clear. Thanks.

I am still upset that Microsoft uses that terminology. And even more is
the fact that I can't find in online documentation anywhere Microsoft's
definitions for their field names. Am I missing something or can you find
it and point me at the document?

Anyway, thanks again for your help. Maybe this has helped some other
confused Outlook user.

Charley

 

[Diane Poremsky]

well, there is a clear bug in how outlook imports dates from OE... but I'm
glad this got straightened out.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
Outlook 2007: http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/