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