Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Barr_y on May 30, 2007, 10:48:45 AM
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The Date on the bottom of my friends emails in Avast show as 05/30/07 instead of the English version 30/05/07 can this be changed to stop his confusion please.
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Are you speaking of messages sent through the avast personal message system (between avast users) or of a regular email service?
If you are referring to avast personal messages (between avast users) then the date format appears to be dd mmm yyyy and should be pretty clear.
If you are referring to regular email service then avast does nothing to change email messages other than to insert the X-Antivirus headers and "clean" messages if directed. In those cases avast follows the date format rules of the user's system. So sent messages will have avast additions following the rules of the sender's system and received messages will have avast additions following the rules of the receiver's system.
Apart from that the date and time formats in an email will be those created by the sender's email client and will, in most cases, follow the date and time rules of that system.
If you are receiving the messages on the Web (as for Yahoo or Hotmail) then avast is not involved at all.
Can you give us an example of your concern?
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Hi Alan thank you for reply. I am talking about the message Avast puts at the bottom of received and sent emails. My friend is 85 and gets confused by the date he receives emails from the format printed at the bottom of the emails by Avast. I think it is a Windows problem but can't remember how he can change it. I know I selected English when I put XP on my computer but am not sure if it can be altered now. I do have a photo but can't see how to upload it here.
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I think it is a Windows problem but can't remember how he can change it.
No, it's an avast configuration.
Change the format of that notes into Internet Mail provider or Outlook plugin.
Click 'Format of the notes'.
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Hi Tech I have looked at my version but I can't see where changing the format of the date is. You can see my one the date is set English way But his is set USA date way.
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Tech you can't change the date format by changing the format of the note, as Alan said this is taken from the system date format.
Tested on: %TIMEDATE%
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Tech you can't change the date format by changing the format of the note
Yeah :'(
Hope Igor could take a look on this thread and help us.
I can't find any avast4.ini file setting to do that either...
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OK I can see that now. But are you able to change the USA format to English format on the computer apart from when you are installing an OS. It wouldn't be worth it to format again just because of a date difference. Haven't Windows anywhere to change the format at all?
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They, avast, could only say where it, the %TIMEDATE% variable is obtained from and the user/Barr_y would have to change that to the UK date format.
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I just did a help and support search for time date format and it brought up a number of options, this was one of them "Change number, currency, time, and date settings"
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Hi David Thank you very much. I had also googled but must have put wrong information in. I Knew I had seen it before on my computer but couldn't remember. I tried the Date and time settings but that wasn't right. I will now be able to give him the instructions. Thank you very much once again.
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Your welcome, I didn't use google for that but the Windows Help and Support from the Start button.
Lets us know if that was the problem.
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I just got him to alter his settings via MSN Messenger and he sent this email and as you can see it didn't put it right.
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I'm afraid the issue is a bit more complicated.
First, and most important thing: the notes are added, and also generated, by avast! Mail Scanner Service. This service runs under LocalSystem account. Now, if you go into Control Panel / Regional and Language Options and configure the date format there - it will affect the programs running under your user account, but not this service (a bit more technically, I can say that the date format is stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry key; but LocalSystem account sees a different "current user" key than the ordinary user).
So, to configure this date format, you'd have to modify the value sShortDate in the following key:
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International
(You probably want to put the value d.M.yyyy there - or you can copy it from your account settings, i.e. from the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International).
Second, after you make the change, it's necessary to restart the computer (or at least avast! services).
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Thanks Igor, could I take you off topic and ask you to take a look at this one, http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=28603.0 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=28603.0), a Mac notebook with Dual boot, OSX and XP, services not loading on XP start-up, thanks.
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Hi Igor thank you for that information. I would do that on my own computer OK but trying to get an 85 year old to do it through MSN Messenger, that has a job to understand. I wouldn't dare to take him into the registry. I will have to wait until I visit him to make the alteration. But thank you again anyway.
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You could export the previously mentioned International registry key in your setup and that saves a .reg file which could be run 'merge' however both your systems would have to be essentially the same. Identifying this would probably just as difficult and probably safer done face to face.
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You could export all the keys and then edit the .reg file to have *only* the sShortDate value and then send to him to import to the registry, even if your systems aren't essentially the same.
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Now why didn't I think of that ;D
That would certainly be simpler, I exported mine and edited it and tried to test it, but for some I couldn't get it to run. I kept getting the reg file is not a valid win32 application.
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That would certainly be simpler, I exported mine and edited it and tried to test it, but for some I couldn't get it to run. I kept getting the reg file is not a valid win32 application.
The file must begin with: REGEDIT4
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International]
"sShortDate"="d/M/yyyy"
It's just test 8)
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It did, because I changed it to that it originally when exported had:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 as the first line (I changed that to REGEDIT4), which makes a bit of a mockery of the export process, if you subsequently can't merge/restore the exported reg key. Unless this works only with import and I can see no option to import.
Interestingly I tried something else, created another .reg file ShortDate.reg (left original line one) opened the registry at the International key and dragged and dropped the ShortDate.reg file into it and it reported success, go figure, I never knew it did that ???
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International]
"sLongDate"="dd MMMM yyyy"
"sShortDate"="dd/MM/yyyy"