Robert Locke: >>> But, one thing I have learned to NOT do, is to set my sorting on the >>> Date column. I have no down or up arrow on the date column. Tim: >> As one of those YMMV moments, I have threading turned on, *and* messages >> sorted on date (newest topmost). Things are working fine for me. Robert Locke: > It's only a "problem" for me if I delete the first message of a thread, > though, admittedly, I tended to sort it "oldest" first.... Same here, I just wrote it wrong, before. I should have wrote *oldest* topmost... Since I don't do it the other way, I don't know if there's a problem that way around. Just in case that's important to someone else working through all of this. > Sorting appears to be done on the first message in the thread. When that first > message in the thread is deleted, the remainder of the thread is > "relocated" to an appropriate spot. Since I turned off hiding deleted messages, I haven't seen the order scramble around. I just turned it back on and tried deleting some mail. With the date column being used to order the threading, message ordering can jump about, depending on what you delete. Without the date column being used, they don't. Threading should be done by the in-reply-to and references headers, with the dates being used to sort multiple replies to a single post. If you delete one of the reference points in the middle, you might shuffle things around unexpectedly (to you). At that point, the client can only use the references and dates headers, as the in-reply-to header points to a non-existent message. Such orphaned messages might get re-threaded between other messages. > But if I don't have "date sorting" turned on, it leaves things where > they are.... In that case I'd expect it use some other date for ordering, probably the received order, but I can't see any indicator to give me a clue (it could be doing that, it might not, it could be using dates or message numbers to work out the sequence). Making evolution show me the received date column didn't help. To be honest, I found that not hiding deleted messages had some advantages. Occasionally something will go doolally and delete several messages for one key press. With the messages showing, it's easy to get them back. With them hidden, I've got to jump through hoops to find them again, and not lose my place in the stack of mail. -- (This box runs FC6, my others run FC4 & FC5, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.