diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 828a738e0..12c49e9d5 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -8,8 +8,6 @@
 
 * fix: fileutils/file_type check json and eml decode ignore error
 
-## 0.6.6-dev0
-
 ### Enhancements
 
 * Added an additional trace logger for NLP debugging.
@@ -18,6 +16,8 @@
 
 ### Fixes
 
+* `partition_email` was updated to more flexibly handle deviations from the RFC-2822 standard.
+  The time in the metadata returns `None` if the time does not match RFC-2822 at all.
 * Include all metadata fields when converting to dataframe or CSV
 
 ## 0.6.5
diff --git a/test_unstructured/partition/test_email.py b/test_unstructured/partition/test_email.py
index 65a368a42..7e6f6cac4 100644
--- a/test_unstructured/partition/test_email.py
+++ b/test_unstructured/partition/test_email.py
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ from unstructured.documents.email_elements import (
     Subject,
 )
 from unstructured.partition.email import (
+    convert_to_iso_8601,
     extract_attachment_info,
     partition_email,
     partition_email_header,
@@ -226,3 +227,17 @@ def test_partition_email_processes_fake_email_with_header():
     filename = os.path.join(DIRECTORY, "..", "..", "example-docs", "fake-email-header.eml")
     elements = partition_email(filename=filename)
     assert len(elements) > 0
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize(
+    (("time", "expected")),
+    [
+        ("Thu,  4 May 2023 02:32:49 +0000", "2023-05-04T02:32:49+00:00"),
+        ("Thu, 4 May 2023 02:32:49 +0000", "2023-05-04T02:32:49+00:00"),
+        ("Thu, 4 May 2023 02:32:49 +0000 (UTC)", "2023-05-04T02:32:49+00:00"),
+        ("Thursday 5/3/2023 02:32:49", None),
+    ],
+)
+def test_convert_to_iso_8601(time, expected):
+    iso_time = convert_to_iso_8601(time)
+    assert iso_time == expected
diff --git a/unstructured/nlp/patterns.py b/unstructured/nlp/patterns.py
index 475f06be2..733751f74 100644
--- a/unstructured/nlp/patterns.py
+++ b/unstructured/nlp/patterns.py
@@ -89,8 +89,11 @@ MAPI_ID_PATTERN = "[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*;"  # noqa: W605 NOTE(harrell)
 # - skipping qa because we need the escape for the regex
 
 # Date, time, timezone example: Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:04:09 +1200
-EMAIL_DATETIMETZ_PATTERN = "[a-zA-z]{3},\s[0-9]{2}\s[a-zA-Z]{3}\s[0-9]{4}\s[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}\s[+0-9]{5}"  # noqa: W605,E501
 # NOTE(harrell) - skipping qa because we need the escape for the regex
+EMAIL_DATETIMETZ_PATTERN = (
+    r"[A-Za-z]{3},\s\d{1,2}\s[A-Za-z]{3}\s\d{4}\s\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}\s[+-]\d{4}"  # noqa: W605,E501
+)
+EMAIL_DATETIMETZ_PATTERN_RE = re.compile(EMAIL_DATETIMETZ_PATTERN)
 
 EMAIL_ADDRESS_PATTERN = "[a-z0-9\.\-+_]+@[a-z0-9\.\-+_]+\.[a-z]+"  # noqa: W605 NOTE(harrell)
 # - skipping qa because we need the escape for the regex
diff --git a/unstructured/partition/email.py b/unstructured/partition/email.py
index cda69f0de..35ecec491 100644
--- a/unstructured/partition/email.py
+++ b/unstructured/partition/email.py
@@ -36,6 +36,8 @@ from unstructured.documents.email_elements import (
     Sender,
     Subject,
 )
+from unstructured.logger import logger
+from unstructured.nlp.patterns import EMAIL_DATETIMETZ_PATTERN_RE
 from unstructured.partition.html import partition_html
 from unstructured.partition.text import partition_text, split_by_paragraph
 
@@ -112,9 +114,17 @@ def build_email_metadata(msg: Message) -> ElementMetadata:
     )
 
 
-def convert_to_iso_8601(time: str) -> str:
+def convert_to_iso_8601(time: str) -> Optional[str]:
     """Converts the datetime from the email output to ISO-8601 format."""
-    datetime_object = datetime.datetime.strptime(time, "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z")
+    cleaned_time = clean_extra_whitespace(time)
+    regex_match = EMAIL_DATETIMETZ_PATTERN_RE.search(cleaned_time)
+    if regex_match is None:
+        logger.warning(f"{time} did not match RFC-2822 format. Unable to extract the time.")
+        return None
+
+    start, end = regex_match.span()
+    dt_string = cleaned_time[start:end]
+    datetime_object = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt_string, "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z")
     return datetime_object.isoformat()