funny how some sleep and a cup of coffee gets your brain working... man this was so easy im embarrassed to have asked
$message_count = imap_num_msg($mbox);
if($message_count == 0)
{
exit();
}
$counts = array();
for ($msgno = 1; $msgno <= $message_count; $msgno++)
{
$header = imap_header($mbox, $msgno);
$date = date('F d Y',strtotime($header->date));
if(array_key_exists($date,$counts))
{
$counts[$date]++;
}
else
{
$counts[$date] = 1;
}
}
echo '<pre>';
print_r($counts);
still needs some sort, but, itll do =)