How to get the "Date" of an email?

Question

I create an application that gets email from mail server. I use "System.Net.Mail.MailMessage" for receive email. Now I want to get "Date and Time" of each email that ins in Inbox.

Be more specific if you can. DateTime from the html header? Or the date your mail client receives it? — , Oct 03 '12 at 12:51
I guess I want DateTime from the html header.For example in gmail, I want that DateTime that shows in each email. — Tavousi, Oct 03 '12 at 13:03
Well I won't claim to explain anything that Micah already hasn't. Using the system.net.mail.mailmessage class you have access to all of that information you need in the Headers. Have a look at his answer and the link he's provided. — , Oct 03 '12 at 13:28

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 03 '12 at 12:58

20

You will want to look at the emails headers here is some documentation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.mailmessage.headers.aspx

message.Headers["Date"];

answered Oct 03 '12 at 12:58

Micah Armantrout

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This headers means to be just a string in rather specific format, is parsing it manually the best practice to get the date? – Johnny_D Dec 04 '12 at 12:51
Yes this is going to come back as a string and then you will need to use datetime.parse – Micah Armantrout Dec 05 '12 at 00:05
2

watch out - DateTime.Parse won't always be able to parse certain dates that may come back in headers : eg. "Tue, 20 Jun 2017 18:51:10 +0000 (UTC)" – Simon_Weaver Jun 21 '17 at 19:50

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '19 at 14:32

I inspected the MailMessageObject and found this:

  Headers=HeaderCollection(5) 
  {
    "Uid",
    "DateCreated",
    "DateReceived",
    "Date",
    "IsRead"

So that means you have a total of three options available to you. The output will be in string format.

message.Headers["DateCreated"];
message.Headers["DateReceived"];
message.Headers["Date"];

How to get the "Date" of an email?

2 Answers2