Webmail Date Format Hardcoded to US (mm/dd/yyyy) Regardless of User Locale – Critical Localisation Gap

Problem reported by Craig Edmonds - 3/3/2026 at 10:53 AM

Resolved

We have are in the process of migrating approximately 1,600+ mailboxes from Rackspace to a self-hosted SmarterMail cluster (EU-based, GDPR-aligned infrastructure) and are about 100 accounts and discovered something quite unsettling.

During deployment we discovered that:

Webmail displays dates exclusively in US format (mm/dd/yyyy), even when the user’s locale is set to a European region.

This behaviour appears to be hardcoded and not configurable.

Why This Is a Problem

Locale settings exist but are not respected
SmarterMail allows user locale configuration. However, date formatting in Webmail does not reflect those settings.
This causes real user confusion
In Europe, the standard format is dd/mm/yyyy.
For example:
- 03/04/2026 → Is that March 4th or April 3rd?
In enterprise environments this creates unnecessary ambiguity.
This impacts international deployments
SmarterMail is marketed globally.
A hardcoded US date format in the UI significantly reduces the perceived localisation maturity of the product.
This is not a niche feature
Proper date localisation is standard behaviour in modern software applications.
Browsers, SaaS platforms, CRMs, and even basic admin panels respect locale or regional formatting.

What Is Being Requested

At minimum:

Date format should respect the user’s locale setting.
OR allow administrators to define a system-wide date format.
OR provide a simple dropdown format selection in Webmail settings.

This should not require custom CSS, hacks, or feature workarounds.

Why This Matters

We are deploying SmarterMail across a large European user base.

The inability to display dates in dd/mm/yyyy format is generating avoidable friction during migration.

For a modern enterprise mail platform, this is a fundamental localisation expectation.

Call to Action

If you operate SmarterMail outside the United States, or deploy it in international environments:

Please upvote this feature request.

Proper locale-aware date formatting should be standard functionality in Webmail.

8 Replies

Reply to Thread

Brian Bjerring-Jensen - VonBjerring GmbH Replied

3/3/2026 at 11:28 AM

This is ours build 9546

Displays as it is supposed to.

Zach Sylvester Replied

3/3/2026 at 1:23 PM

Employee Post

Hello Craig,

Thanks for the post. Date Format is connected to the language the user is set to. To display dates in D/M/Y format, simply set the user's language to English (United Kingdom). You can do this in bulk using the user defaults.

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards,

Zach Sylvester Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Craig Edmonds Replied

3/3/2026 at 3:19 PM

@Zach

It definitely 100% does not change the date format.

I have tried every combo and even SM Support told me that it was hard coded and was even told told me come here and post and request community support to upvote it!

I am using Linux Enterprise Version of SmarterMail build: 100.0.9518.30214 (1/22/2026)

terry fairbrother Replied

3/3/2026 at 3:56 PM

Check your linux itself is set to the correct language. I had the same issue first time I rolled it all out and had to make notes to ensure the OS and SM were all set to English UK

Craig Edmonds Replied

3/3/2026 at 4:47 PM

@terry

Good try but I updated the locale on the server to GB but still on webmail side and admin side still showing US locale.

:o(

[root@mx1 ~]# locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Zach Sylvester Replied

3/3/2026 at 10:00 PM

Employee Post Marked As Resolution

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your replies on this post. The system locale is not relevant to this issue. The earlier answer referencing that was from a new support employee who is still in training, so I apologize for the confusion.

In SmarterMail, the date format used in webmail is determined by the language configured on the user account, not the server operating system locale.

To display dates in d/m/y format, you need to set the user’s language to English (United Kingdom).

I reviewed your ticket and it appears the user’s language is currently set to English, and only the timezone has been modified. Changing the timezone alone will not affect the date format. The language setting must be changed.

After doing this, dates in email should display in the expected format.

If you do not see the change after making this update, the most likely reason is that you are impersonating the account. When impersonating a user, webmail uses the language configured on the administrator account, not the user account.

You can verify this under Settings → Administrators → Your admin account.

If you also set your administrator language to English (United Kingdom), the dates should display in the same format when impersonating users.

This behavior exists so administrators can still navigate webmail even if a user’s account is configured with a language they do not speak.

Again, I apologize for the confusion earlier in the thread. I have also reached out to the support department manager and asked him to review the ticket so it can be used as a learning opportunity for our team.

Kind regards,

Zach Sylvester Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Craig Edmonds Replied

3/3/2026 at 10:27 PM

@Zach,

Thank you for the clarification.

After testing again I can confirm the behaviour you described:

When logging in directly as the user through webmail, the dates now display correctly in dd/mm/yyyy format once the user language is set to English (United Kingdom).

The confusion on my side came from the fact that I have primarily been impersonating users during the mailbox migration process while assisting clients. In that situation, the webmail interface uses the administrator account language, not the user language.

Once I updated the administrator account language to English (United Kingdom) as well, the date format displayed correctly when impersonating users.

Thank you for clarifying this and for the transparency regarding the earlier response. I appreciate you taking the time to explain the behaviour clearly.

Zach Sylvester Replied

3/3/2026 at 10:49 PM

Employee Post

Hello Craig,

No problem at all. I’m glad we were able to figure it out. Please feel free to open a support ticket if you come across any further questions or run into anything else during your migration.

Kind regards,

Zach Sylvester Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

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