Date display format: Difference between revisions

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In Mac OS X, go to the "International" panel in System Preferences. The date format can be adjusted under the "Format" tab.
In Mac OS X, go to the "International" panel in System Preferences. The date format can be adjusted under the "Format" tab.
==External links==
* [https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=thunderbird&id=901 ConfigDate extension for Thunderbird]: allows you to configure the date display format without needing to manually edit the user.js file.


[[Category:Displaying and printing messages (Thunderbird)]]
[[Category:Displaying and printing messages (Thunderbird)]]

Revision as of 11:58, 10 January 2006

This article applies to both Thunderbird and the Mozilla Suite.

Changing the display format for today's date

By default the Mozilla Suite and Thunderbird display the time only (without the date) for messages less than one day old.  For messages older than this, both the date and time will be displayed.  To change the display format for today's date, exit the Mozilla Suite or Thunderbird and insert the following line into the "user.js" file, replacing [value] with one of the values shown in the table below:

user_pref("mail.ui.display.dateformat.today", [value]);


Value Example Date
0 10:23 AM
1 Friday, December 31 2003 10:23 AM
2 12/31/1999 10:23 AM
3 12/1999 10:23 AM
4 Fri 10:23 AM

Example:

user_pref("mail.ui.display.dateformat.today", 2);

With the above line inserted into "user.js", messages received or sent during the current day will be displayed with both the date and time, in numeric format.

Changing the display format for other dates

You can similarly change the display format for "this week" (the past seven days excluding today) or the default date format (all dates excluding the past seven days). To do so, use one of the values shown in the table above and insert the appropriate line of code into the "user.js" file, as shown below.

For "this week":

user_pref("mail.ui.display.dateformat.thisweek", [value]); 

For the default date:

user_pref("mail.ui.display.dateformat.default", [value]);

Configuring the date/time system settings on your computer

In addition to the settings shown above, the precise display formats for date/time can also be affected by the system settings for date/time on your computer. For instance, depending on your computer's system settings, the numerical display format for the date could be "31.12.1999", "1999/12/31", "12/31/1999", or something else.

In Windows XP, you can change the settings for date/time format by going to the Control Panel. See here for detailed instructions.

In Linux, these settings are based on your locale. If the environment variable "LANG" is set to "en_US", for example, Thunderbird will show the date in "MM/DD/YYYY" format. To override the locale only for showing dates, set the "LC_TIME" environment variable (for example, "LC_TIME=en_GB"). If you want the ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD), use the en_DK locale.

In Mac OS X, go to the "International" panel in System Preferences. The date format can be adjusted under the "Format" tab.

External links