[Dovecot] Sorting messages by date

[Stephen Allen]

I've recovered a load of messages from a different mail server without it's 
index file (it was corrupted).  I now have thousands of messages which 
display in Outlook Express (yes, you may puke at this), all as today's date. 
However when I read them in Pine, the date of each message is displayed 
correctly, but they're in no particular order whatsoever.

There are several questions here, some of which aren't suitable for this 
list, but for completeness...

1.
Does Dovecot store what it thinks is the date the message arrived, in it's 
index file?

2.
Can I fake Dovecot into thinking the messages arrived on a different date by 
including something in the message headers, or changing the date/time stamp 
of each file (but I don't know how to do this)?

3.
Pine correctly picks out a date from the message (although it doesn't sort 
by this order), and Outlook Express just displays everything as the date 
which it (or Dovecot) first saw the message.  Does Outlook rely on Dovecot's 
sorting/date information or does it do it's own?

Many thanks,
Steve :)