Each mail messages has multiple time stamps. You can see these in File,
Properties, Details.

When you look at the list of messages in Microsoft IE3 Internet Mail or
IE4+ Outlook Express, the Received time is when the message was received
by your ISP's mail server. The server supplies the time. This is the
first (top most) of possibly several "Received:" lines in the message
header. Each mail server that a message passes through adds its own
Received line. These are in reverse order, so that the bottom most one
listed is the first server that received the message from the sender.

When you open or print a message, the time displayed is from the
sender's PC when he wrote the message, not necessarily when he
transmitted it (depends on the mail client). The time comes from his
PC. This is the "Date:" line in the message header.

The time stamps include a time zone code as either an offset from GMT
(e.g. -0800) or a character code (e.g. PST). The mail program attempts
to adjust displayed times to your local time. If it doesn't recognize a
time zone in a time stamp, it treats it as GMT. The mail program
recognizes the US time zone codes and GMT. Most others it doesn't.
Make sure you have the correct time zone setting on your PC. For
Windows look in Control Panel, Date/Time.

Due to incorrect clock settings and time zones and improperly formatted
time stamps (a number of servers ignore the Internet standards), the
displayed times may or may not be accurate.

You may find that Microsoft Internet Mail or Outlook Express displays an
incorrect Received time, when other mail programs don't seem to have a
problem. Netscape, for example, only displays the Sent time from the
Date line. So if your ISP's mail servers have and incorrect time,
Netscape won't notice. You can do the same in Microsoft by selecting
View, Columns and choosing Sent rather than Received.

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"Dig" wrote in message
...
Can someone help me understand the time signatures on emails? Every
email I
get seems to have a time signature that does not match the time I
receive it.
Where does this time signature come from?

Is it the time it is sent? Time received? Time through the net?

Thanks