Changing the date format in Mozilla Thunderbird

[pauloz]

Hello there.

I've just recently installed ubuntu 10.10 on my netbook and I'm trying out Mozilla Thunderbird mail to see if it's OK.

I noticed the date format is defaulted at mm/dd/yyyy but I want to change it to dd/mm/yyyy. I've looked on the internet but instructions I've read on some sites are not clear.

Can anybody help me please?

[ajgreeny]

I think this is all sorted by the system wide locale and timezone settings you have set.

Where are you, and what settings do you have in other places like the panel calendar and date fields in OpenOffice?

[pauloz]

I'm in Australia and the timezone settings have been entered accordingly. I'm not sure what you mean by the date fields in OpenOffice - I didn't think that would have any bearing.
Thanks.

[pauloz]

I'm in Australia and the timezone settings have been entered accordingly. I'm not sure what you mean by the date fields in OpenOffice - I didn't think that would have any bearing.
Thanks.

[ajgreeny]

Check which thunderbird-locale package you have with the package manager. It sounds as if it's the en-us version. If so add the en-gb version, and then remove the en-us.

[pauloz]

Hello again. I went into Synaptic Package Manager and selected English (GB) Language Pack 3.1.99. It is now displaying in Mozilla Thunderbird if you go to Tools>Add-ons>Languages BUT I seem to be going around circles trying to install it. Also, there is no option to remove the en-us version. Any step-by-step help would be appreciated thanks.

[ajgreeny]

If it shows like that in Add-ons, it is already installed.

If you still have the US version showing there as well, click on it and choose "Disable" or simply use synaptic to remove the en-us version of the locale.

[pauloz]

The US version is not showing in Add-ons plus there is no option available to remove the en-us version in the locale. But the date format is still American! Looks like I may have to live with this or use another email client. Thanks for your time.

[TopEnder]

pauloz, Is your time & date format correct on your Desktop (top right).

[lotus@terminal]

You can change the format of your date via the terminal by doing the following,


You need to customise your current locale (en_IE in my case). To do this, change directory to /usr/share/i18n/locales. Here you will find many locales for many regions. Choose the locale you wish to customise and copy it by executing:

sudo cp en_IE custom

Next chose the date or time format string you would like. In my case it will be “%d.%m.%Y”. You can check and modify this string using the date command, as in:

date +%d.%m.%Y

If this returns the date in the format you would like, then you know you have the right format string. You can find all format codes if you use “man date”.
The date format string, is specified in the locale file using a Unicode notation. Open your custom locale using your favourite text editor:

sudo gedit custom

The date format is specified on the line beginning “d_fmt”, and looks like:
d_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U002F><U0025><U006D><U002F><U0025> <U0079>"

You will now have to convert your date format string to Unicode. You can do this, by looking up the Unicode equivalent for each character on http://asciitable.com/. In this way “%” becomes “<U0025>”, “d” becomes “<U0064>”, “.” becomes “<U002E>”, and so on. Replace the d_fmt line with your new format string:

d_fmt "<U0025><U0064><U002E><U0025><U006D><U002E><U0025> <U0059>" The same process can be used to modify the datetime format (d_t_fmt), date format (d_fmt), time format (t_fmt), am and pm format (am_pm), and standard 12 hour notation (t_fmt_ampm), as well as other locale settings.

Save and exit your text editor. You now have a custom locale in the file “custom”. In order for the system to use it, you need to compile it into a system readable locale definition. This can be done using the locale compiler by executing:

sudo localedef -f UTF-8 -i custom custom.UTF-8

Now the new custom locale is available to the system, you need to configure the system to use it. Do this by editing the file /etc/environment (sudo gedit /etc/environment) and adding (or modifying) the line:LC_TIME="custom.UTF-8"

All that remains is to log out and log in again, or restart any system services, to see the new format being applied.

Hope this solves your problem.