Reply attribution

If you have quoted replies enabled, then the attribution line will appear above the quoted reply.

It normally looks something like this:

On Thu, 10 Sep 2019 3:15, Joe Bloggs wrote:

You can customize the attribution line by following these steps:

  1. Open Settings → Signature & Compose.
  2. Click the Compose options tab.
  3. Scroll down to the When replying section.
  4. Find the Reply Attribution option and enter your desired text into the field. You can use literal text, or you can use a pattern.

Control characters

If you would like to use a pattern in your reply attribution, you can use control characters.

Using the above example, this would look like:

On %a, %Y-%m-%d, %I:%M %p, %+n wrote:

Sender details

  • %+f — the sender's name and email address.
  • %+n — the sender's name (or email address, if no name is included).
  • %+a — the sender's email address.

Message time

  • %d — the day of the month when the message was sent in mm-dd format (01-31).
  • %e — the day of the month when the message was sent in dd-mm format (31-01).
  • %m — the month when the message was sent in mm-yy format (01-12).
  • %Y — the year when the message was sent (4 digits).
  • %y — the year when the message was sent (last 2 digits).
  • %H — the hour when the message was sent (00-23).
  • %I — the hour when the message was sent (01-12).
  • %k — the hour when the message was sent (00-23).
  • %l — the hour when the message was sent (1-12).
  • %p — "AM" or "PM" when the message was sent. This will be localized to your language where possible.
  • %M — the minutes when the message was sent (00-59).
  • %S — the seconds when the message was sent (00-59).
  • %A — the weekday when the message was sent (Monday-Sunday).
  • %a — the abbreviated weekday when the message was sent (Mon-Sun).
  • %B — the month when the message was sent (January-December).
  • %b — the abbreviated month when the message was sent (Jan-Dec).
  • %z — the time zone offset for when the message was sent.

Some formats like %e, %k, %l are always 2 characters wide, and include a leading space. This is designed to make it simpler to format strings. If you would like to remove this space, place a - between the % and the letter, for example: %-e, %-k, %-l.

  • %e on the 6th day of the month produces 6
  • %-e on the 6th day of the month produces 6.

Other control characters

  • %n — a new line.
  • %% — the percent sign.
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