Delayed mail - a challenge

[Timothy]

Have a look at this (ftp://www.artifax.net/files/Misc/maildelay.jpg) completely unadulterated screen shot from a colleague's pc this morning and see who can come up with the most imaginative explanation :)

I should add that the two of them have exchanged many, many other eMails in the meantime.

Will

[PPRuNe Radar]

Could be the senders PC clock was set to the wrong year ???

I could probably fiddle with the PPRuNe clock in the Admin Panel to make this post be sent chronologically before yours .... but then Danny would chop my hands off and the keyboard would be a bloody mess :)

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

As Radar suggests, by far the most likely explanation is the PC losing its clock. Or somebody was mucking about with the settings ;)

RTFM

(PS Check your PM's, please W )

[Timothy]

...no, sorry guys, the contents of the eMail are consistent with a conversation held back in 2002....this has genuinely been delayed for that period.

Will

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

...this has genuinely been delayed for that period.

In that case it's almost certainly been sitting in a "spool" directory somewhere on a system which has been turned off/crashed/decommissioned/etc. and has emerged when said system has been restarted for whatever reason. Is this email "internal" to your organisation, or did it come via "the Internet" ?

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

WCollins,

I have a Browser based email account that I use for signing up for forums etc. so my main email account does not get bombed.

About six months ago, I had an email from a friend dated 1999. Turned out he had sent it that many years ago and it finally made it to my account. My guess is the company I use for Browser email had performed some maintenance on their system and it recovered the email and finally delivered it.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. In your case, it could be either the sender's PC or the Mail Server itself had the wrong date when the email was sent.

[Timothy]

It was from an external (ie over the Internet) source, and I reiterate there is no possibility of it being a clock issue, because there is no question that the eMail was one in a sequence of questions and answers in Nov 2002 or whenever it was, and it was received today (er looks at watch) yesterday, by someone coming off leave, so presumably delivered to our mail server on 7/1 as announced.

Anyway, it amused me:D

Will

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

Will,

In that case, take a look at the mail headers. How to do this varies with mail application, but assuming Outlook,
1. Open the message
2. From the menu, select "View", then "Options..."
3. This will display the message options page:
4. The message header appears in the box at the bottom labeled "Internet Headers". They may be quite long.

Outlook Express is similar but not identical. If you're lucky enought not to be using an MS mail product at all, I can usually help with most of the common ones...

This will give us some clue as to where the message has got "stuck". You probably shouldn't post the header here due privacy issues, but if you would like me to take a look, feel free to PM them to me.

(The only way provided by Outlook to pass this information on is to Cut and Paste it somewhere.)