date format for the column "sent" in Opera Mail

How do I change the date format for the column "sent"
Not convenient when one column two different formats.

Welcome to the My Opera community!

Originally posted by vilisbiezais:

Not convenient when one column two different formats.

Please be more specific.

Today 17:02:55
Monday 09:55:03
17.11.2011
16.11.2011
05.10.2011

That's intentional (recent messages are more specific with days mentioned as words) and you can't change it, sorry.

This is a great inconvenience. Especially when you sort by "subject".
You have to use the calendar to find out the date.
Programmers need to improve Opera.

You can make suggestions in the wish-list forum if you like.

Otherwise you'd have to use the calendar to figure out the weekday

We will slightly change the behavior here for Opera 11.60 btw, but probably not enough to your liking.

Originally posted by Rijk:

We will slightly change the behavior here for Opera 11.60 btw, but probably not enough to your liking.

It is possible to do so:
In settings made a "limit days" for the last messages. For example:

0 days = DD.MM.YYYY for all
1 day = "today"+hh:mm:ss and DD.MM.YYYY for the remaining
2 days = "today"+hh:mm:ss and "Yesterday"+hh:mm:ss and DD.MM.YYYY for the remaining
7 days = as it is now

This is the most inconvenient bull**** Opera has ever released. I DO NOT WANT THIS, too !!!

Please let me decide, how a date is formatted! It has to look like 12. 12. 2011 in Europe!

I start watching out for alternatives to Opera.

If I would have liked Outlook, I woud have installed Outlook! Do you get the point? Better fix this as we regard it a bug!

/d

@dwilkins: which type of date format to show for which days has only changed slightly from 11.5, it has always been the case that messages from the last week showed a weekday and not a numeric date. The new mail window layout is customizable, so I'm not sure what the reference to Outlook is about.

The formatting of dates (dots or dashes or slashes, month-day order) is based on the system settings, just as before. Note that 'Europe' is not relevant, date styles are different on various European countries.

Originally posted by dwilkens:

... Please let me decide, how a date is formatted! ...

Originally posted by Rijk:

@dwilkins: which type of date format to show for which days has only changed slightly from 11.5, it has always been the case that messages from the last week showed a weekday and not a numeric date. The new mail window layout is customizable, so I'm not sure what the reference to Outlook is about.

The formatting of dates (dots or dashes or slashes, month-day order) is based on the system settings, just as before. Note that 'Europe' is not relevant, date styles are different on various European countries.

I thought I made myself clear:
I want a 12.12.2011 format or dd.mm.yyyy for ALL dates.
I tried to go back to the old version to avoid this paternalism. Yes I know how to get rpm working on the CLI. For no avail:
It does not work out since the mail data is not backward compatible (If you would have told me about this trap...). Now I'm stuck with the bubble of features version and the essential basics are lost on the way.

To get it as simple as your understanding of customer needs is:
a) I want to decide how to format a date
b) I want the option to use a format like 12.12.2011 format or dd.mm.yyyy

And yes, I trade in all that confusing customisation options of useless bars and plenty of panels and all that stuff.

I used Opera since the early Windows 3.1 versions and installed it for many friends and even people I hardly knew. Game over. I'll never recommend Opera again. It will be no surprise if it's assimilated by M$ or whatever...

HOW TO GET MY simple DATE FORMAT back? Is there a config text file somewhere in the hidden .opera dir to edit? I know how sufficiently how to use VI so please tell me about how to make Opera convenient again, PLEASE!!!.

/d

Originally posted by Rijk:

it has always been the case that messages from the last week showed a weekday and not a numeric date.

Quite a few users complain about this. Comes up quite often.

Sorting a view by date doesn’t work anymore in 11.60. I’ve set the newest messages to the end of the list, but each time new items are added they are spread across the list randomly. That’s not an improvement …

Originally posted by toscho:

Sorting a view by date doesn’t work anymore in 11.60. I’ve set the newest messages to the end of the list, but each time new items are added they are spread across the list randomly. That’s not an improvement …

Do you have threading turned on? If so, when a new message to a thread comes in, the thread is supposed to jump to the top/bottom (depending on your descending/ascending sorting) of the list (with no way to turn that off). Is that what you're seeing?

Or, are you seeing messages out of order with threading off too?

No threading, it happens on feed views too.

OK. I know a few users complained about a couple of messages being out of place. Not sure if that's what you're seeing or not.

Yes, there is a problem with incoming message sorting if you disable grouping in the mail list.

I seems to me that, until the most recent update, the Date colums showed as follows:

Today at 15:36:01 (for mail from today)
Yesterday (for mail from yesterday)
Monday (for other mail within seven days ago)
2011/12/03 (for all other mail)

I rather liked that. Now, today's mail just shows a time (precise to the minute, not the second) without the word "Today," and other mail from this week (including yesterday) says "Mon 05 Dec," as though I don't know what month it is. This is foolish and annoying. I'd much prefer to have the other way back.

Oh, and Rijk: whereas the numerical date format ("all other mail" above) does appear to be based on system settings, and is controllable from the Region and Language section of the control panel, the rest appears to be entirely Opera and not configurable at all. That's annoying.

Please fix this. It's getting really annoying.

Originally posted by "vilisbiezais":

Today 17:02:55
Monday 09:55:03
17.11.2011
16.11.2011
05.10.2011

Yes, that has made me gnash my teeth from the beginning, but the last straw was with the new format of 11.60 where there is no year shown, except for a banner across the screen between two year groups. I have verified this in SLED11, MEPIS, and Debian6. Whoever decided on that format is crazy! I have reverted Opera to 11.52 in MEPIS and Debian6, but it refused to revert in SLED11. I don't know if that's an Opera problem, an RPM problem, or a SLED11 problem. I am very thankful that I saved my old email before I did the update to 11.6x. I guess I should try removing Opera in SLED11 and reinstalling 11.52, except that I'm not very versatile in RPM, and I've already wasted a great amount of time to get back to 11.52.

Oh, and one other thing. I want to be able to SPECIFY the order the columns. I don't like that change either.

I will do no more Opera updates unless I KNOW that it doesn't do something stupid, and always have a backup.

Originally posted by lauren-o:

Yes, that has made me gnash my teeth from the beginning

The way Thunderbird (US English locale) does it is:

month/day/year hour:minute AM|PM

as all digits (besides the AM|PM).

The only time Thunderbird deviates from that is messages for today. For those messages, Thunderbird shows just the time as:

hour:minute AM|PM

The time displayed on the message header toolbar is consistent with what's in the list.

But, even that small deviation for today's messages can be annoying.

So, while Thunderbird keeps the deviation to a minimum, Opera takes it to the extreme with:

For today's messages:

hour:minute AM|PM

For Yesterday's messages and older messages of this week:

Day_Name_Abbreviation hour:minute AM|PM

For last week's messages:

Day_Name_Abbreviation Day_Number Month_Name_Abbreviation (should be month and then day in English locale)

with no time shown.

For older messages:

Month_Number/Day_Number/Year_Number

with no time shown.

But, there's a catch. If you have threading enabled, the format shown for each message in the thread will depend on its date. So, with threads, you'll get a mix of formats.

It gets pretty crazy.

I'd rather just have:

Month_Number/Day_Number/Year_Number Hour_Number:Minute_Number AM|PM

on all messages where the message header toolbar displays the full:

Full_Day_Name, Full_Month_Name Day_Number, Year_Number, Hour_Nubmer:Minute_Number:Second_Number AM|PM.

Hi,
I'd like to re-open this old thread to get an update.

Can anyone tell me whether the new Opera (12.0) shows the year in the "sent" date, at least after the last 7 days? I'm still running 11.52 to keep that feature.

I've searched for snapshots of the mail panel but can not find any. I wish Opera would show some in their ad area but I find none.

Thanks for your help.

Originally posted by lauren-o:

Can anyone tell me whether the new Opera (12.0) shows the year in the "sent" date, at least after the last 7 days? I'm still running 11.52 to keep that feature.

It's still the same. The year is shown for messages older than last week's messages. But, that depends on whether you're using threading and the message is a reply to a thread or not.

Originally posted by burnout426:

It's still the same. The year is shown for messages older than last week's messages. But, that depends on whether you're using threading and the message is a reply to a thread or not.

Thank you for that response! But I'm in a slight state of shock! Do you mean that if you are in the thread mode, the year doesn't show up?? I don't even know how to get into the thread mode, except the "Follow/Ignore" option. If I accidentally got into a thread mode, I wouldn't have known to try to get out! Oh, I see in the Opera > Mail > Help area, it says under "View" there is the "Flat" and "Threaded" options. I don't find that in mine. I'm puzzled.

To repeat the problem I had, there was NO year at all, except between Dec. 31 and Jan 1, there was a banner about 3/8 inch high that announced the year. If I went back in time, I could never know where I was in time unless I clicked on a message.

Do you have a suggestion for what I'm missing?
Thanks.

Originally posted by lauren-o:

I don't even know how to get into the thread mode

Opera uses threaded mode by default. See <http://my.opera.com/operawiki/forums/topic.dml?id=1196552> for where settings are at.

Originally posted by lauren-o:

Thank you for that response! But I'm in a slight state of shock! Do you mean that if you are in the thread mode, the year doesn't show up??

What i mean is what I said in <http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=11680292> about what Opera does. That hasn't changed afaict.

I'm sorry I'm so long in responding - I've been on a 1 1/2 week trip. Thank you, burnout, for your information.

After studying your replies, I decided that I'd better upgrade again and see what the email setup is like now. I did that tonight. Hooray! Everything is like it should be now, except they moved the Label column. I preferred it at the right side.

Thank you for your patience!

Originally posted by lauren-o:

Everything is like it should be now, except they moved the Label column. I preferred it at the right side.

See this earlier thread on changing the order of the columns.

Originally posted by Pesala:

See this earlier thread on changing the order of the columns.

Thanks for that link, which I have been studying, and thought I understood.

My system, however, seems to be VERY obstinate.
In the first place, in my prior Opera 11.52, the file operaprefs.ini, Mail View line, had 7 fields (0 thru 6), and the attachments (paper clip) column was shown. In my Opera 12.01, the file operaprefs.ini, Mail View line, has 8 fields (0 thru 7), and there are only 5 columns displayed, which are "From", "Subject", "Labels", "Size", and "Sent". Note that attachments (paper clip) is NOT displayed.

In the second place, there is no change in the columns display when I alter the field numbers in the "Mail View" line. I did not alter the "column length" fields. All of the "column display" fields were set at "1". Yes, I altered the fields with Opera closed.

The "operaprefs.ini" file I am working with is in the ~/.opera folder.

I am using Linux, the MEPIS 11 version.

Do you have a clue of what I am doing wrong?