Comment 42 for bug 115153

I'd recommend WONTFIXing this bug, and here's why...

The reason you want to sort threads by the Order Received of the latest thread is because Date is unreliable, correct?
> Sorting by Date allows the spam
> that set their own random Date: header data to be in unexpected places.

Order Received is not a particularly good alternative as it tends to get changed by Thunderbird as mails are moved around in folders, and it's useless when you're importing a load of e-mails from somewhere else. The best solution is instead to use the Received header for sorting, which is added by the MTA, and is therefore much more reliable. Spams won't be able to fake that date.

(In reply to comment #8)
[...]
> The
> received date is the envelope time-stamp, and is different. I have no desire
> for a "received date" sort,
> as "order received" does this fine for me, as indicated in a later comment.

I think you're misunderstanding 'Received date', as it is indeed much more useful than 'order received'. It basically obsoletes sorting by order received.

Now, you may be asking me how you sort by received date. You can't... yet. However, the good news is that a fix for Bug #166254 is about to be checked in, which will allow you to!

I'd also echo the comment made by Mike Cowperthwaite:
> Sorting in a threaded view is, currently, almost always performed on the
> topmost message in the thread. The one exception is Date, in which case
> the most recent message is used to determine the thread's position.

In other words, dates are a special case. I think we can extend that special case to the Received date as well as Date, but Order Received isn't a date and should probably be ordered, like all other fields, according to the value of the topmost thread message. Ordering by Received date, I believe will do what you want. Just wait for that patch to be checked in and use Received date.