Any way to renumber Mail messages?

[Mugwumper]

I recently imported a number of messages that were dated from Jan 1 -
Mar 15, 2007 that were in my Thunderbird inbox. After they arrived in
the Import folder of Mail, I moved them to my main inbox in Mail. All
transferred without any problem, and they are now arranged in the proper
ascending date order I have in the inbox. The Mail inbox had messages
dating from Mar 15 - Dec 31 with numbers of 1-950, so all the new
imported messages are numbered above 950, even though the were
created before Mar 15.

Is there any way to renumber all the messages so they correspond to their
date/time stamp? (Jan 1 = 1, Dec 31 = xxx)

If I created another inbox locally "On My Mac", then moved all the main
inbox messages to it, and then moved all of them back to the main inbox,
would that do what I want?

Thanks . . .

 

[CalMin]

I think you need to order them by 'sent' not 'received'.

 

[Mugwumper]

No change :^(

I think you need to order them by 'sent' not 'received'.

Thanks, but that didn't change anything. There are still message numbers
in January that are higher than those in June.

Maybe I need a "paradigm shift" - I'd been used to having message numbers
in previous mail clients, but maybe I don't really need them. As long as
messages are grouped in "threads", I should be able to find them, right?
Plus, that's one less column.

Thanks again . . .