Email message dates

I am experiencing an issue with mail imports (via the EF capture key): there is usually a handful of messages in each mailbox import that has the wrong modification date in EF, whereas in Mail the same messages are listed by the correct date.

Close inspection of the raw source in both Mail and EF reveals that the correct dates appear in the To, From and Received fields, but false dates in the Date field. Mail not only lists the files correctly but parses them correctly in date range searches. EF does neither. I understand that EF is probably doing the right thing in going by the date field, and that the error is in the composition of the original email, but why is it that Mail is apparently more error-tolerant. Would it not be preferable for EF to follow the same practice?

(EF 167, Mac OS 10.10.5)

I’m not aware of any bugs with EagleFiler’s date handling. It would be easiest to look into this if you could send me an export of a few of those messages. Please include some screenshots showing how they look for you in EagleFiler and in Mail.

Why are there dates in the To and From fields?

Thanks for sending in a few messages. Each message has a Date Received (in the Received header) and a Date Sent (in the Date header). Mail has columns to display both. EagleFiler (currently) always displays the Date Sent. Unfortunately, in some of the messages that you have the Date Sent (in the message itself) is incorrect. That is, the Date header actually says 1970 or 2002, contradicting the date in the Received header. EagleFiler is correctly displaying (and searching/sorting by) the incorrect date. Perhaps a future version of EagleFiler could add support for Date Received, as well, which would let you more easily search for these problem messages.