There is a small menu bar at top of message view pane. One of the entries is 'Date' and can be selected.

Thanks one says 'switch to calender tabs' the other says 'switch to tasks tab' neither seems to be able to put date on emails received.

The bar is immediately above the topmost message entry. Has words such as Subject, From, ... right-click and you will see list of all possible entries, one of which is 'Received.'

yep, it was not ticked, but when I tick it another column appears exactly the same, no date. It appears to be a day behind, as yesterdays mail which yesterday did not have date, now has, strange and confused

Thunderbird does not show the date for today, only the time. The assumption is I guess you know what todays date is. SO is the issue that nothing is displayed? or that the time only is displayed?

Thank you for your reply, have been using Thunderbird for some time now and never seem to notice that before, but you are right, now it seems all the emails are mixed up date wise, new mails are appearing in the middle of previous mails

Try clicking on the received heading, click again to reverse the sort.