Janak Parekh

<br /><br />Yikes! Looks like the "network time zone" feature that automatically updates your time zone is having an unintended side effect -- it's helpfully sliding events around when it shouldn't. :? I hope they have a permanent fix soon; in the meantime, make sure to carefully check your device and bookmark this page. Oh, and make sure your time zone is correct in the first place: my 700w didn't update this morning, because it was set to Indiana-based EST (...which, of course, no longer exists. Go figure.)

darkdestroyer

Sven Johannsen

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Rod3

mrailing

Hi I'm mrailing (moderator over at pdaphonehome.com in the i730 forum). This issue has come up before, happened back when time changed in October to one of our members that moved from one time zone to another, and never updated their computer. All of their recurring appointments were messed up.

You can see in this thread what the problem was:

http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/showt...ndar+time+zone

I went back and forth with another user that took them down the wrong path entirely, and I ended up calling the person and talking with them to explain it to them.

The problem lies in the way that Microsoft handles dates within Outlook and inside Windows Mobile OS. Which I can't believe that they didn't explain in the Palm article. It's also not limited to the 700w, but to EVERY handheld and Outlook that creates dates in multiple time zones. Here's the issues.

When you create a appointment within Outlook or on a PDA, in the background of that appointment it stores the time zone in which you make it. This is done so that if you change your time zone on the computer, your appointments will automatically shift to the correct time. So on the PDA if you are in NYC (eastern time), and you create an appointment for Noon on your PDA, and then you jump on a plane and travel to LA (pacific time) and you change the "Visiting" time zone on the PDA, then that appointment will automatically adjust from Noon to 9 AM. This is where the problems is. If you originally made the appointment because you wanted it at Noon in LA, then the appointment would be wrong if you changed your visiting time zone, so you would have to leave your time zone the same when traveling and not update.

Of course the work around to this is to always create appointments in the correct time zone you are going to be in. So in the example above you should have actually made the appointment for 3 PM, since that is the time your appointment would have been in NYC, and then it would have been correct when using the visiting time zone.

Now with the Palm, they AUTOMATICALLY changed to the visiting time zone with their app. Which means that if you didn't store all of your dates in the correct time zone (which is easy to forget to change in WM5), most of your dates would be messed up. Also as you can see from the link I posted this is what happened to our user.

Now most of this information is explained in this article:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...565301033.aspx

Even though it's Outlook 2002, it still relates to Outlook 2003, as they didn't fix it.

Now if you go to the same link I posted to on pdaphonehome and look at post #37 you will see how to fix the problem if ALL of your times are incorrect.

I live in Indiana, in what used to be their "special" time zone that never changed. When they announced they were changing times, I modified my own calendar in the same way, because when I changed time zones, all of my old appointments shifted.

So here's the quick and dirty way to fix it:

Sync first to make sure your information is in Outlook.

First you need to export your PST file's calendar. You can't store it in anything that keeps track of the time zone, like another PST, so since I know quite a bit about Access, I dumped my calendar to access.

Now you have to go back in to the Calendar in Outlook and delete all the appointments. Easiest way is to go in to Category view and select all of them that way to delete them.

Next you change the time zone in Outlook and on the PDA so they match. At this point it would be recommened to delete the partnership within ActiveSync so that when you re-create it, you can tell Outlook to overwrite the information on the PDA.

Now with both time zones changed, you can then Import the information that you exported to Access. This will keep the same times and create all the appointments with the new time zone, but again, it keeps the correct times.

This is the quick and dirty work around to this problem to make sure that Outlook has the correct time zone set, and you can use the DST option in the calendar.

Hopefully this will help someone.

Ed Hansberry

that isn't the problem. that is how it is supposed to work. the issue is, why were appointments made on the device affected and those on the PC and synced over handled correctly? as for why Palm changes automatically when you move timezones, that seems to be a CDMA thing, something most (all?) GSM phones don't do.

somehow Palm, MS or Verizon didn't properly handle both the DST change and the time change at the tower.

Foxbat121

Nope. Microsoft did this correctly. It uses UTC time for all appointments created in Outlook. This is true for both Pocket Outlook and Desktop Outlook. The display of the appointment will then be adjusted according to your current time zone and DST settings.

If you ever worked in a large corporation that has offices in both east and west coasts, this is very crucial. If you set up a meeting in west coast time to meet with your co-workers in east coast, Each side will see a different meeting time according to their own timezone difference but the meeting will take place at the time (UTC) that both will meet. When you set up an appointment, think UTC instead of your local time.

In fact almost all the time/date stamps inside Windows are UTC based. If you change your time zone, you will see your file creation time get changed as well.

The key point to remember is NEVER modify internal clock for time changes like DST and timezone. Only modify timezone/DST settings. Microsoft did it wrong in Windows 9x but thankfully it did it right and consistantly for all new OSes since Windows 2000.

Foxbat121

All CDMA towers have to have GPS built-in for it to function. Hence an accurate time signal is always present for CDMA. But timezone settings and DST change would be something else.

GSM doesn't require GPS for network operation.

Janak Parekh

Just to make it clear, "Network Time Zone" is a Treo function. Palm added it. My previous CDMA and GSM Pocket PC Phones did not have the feature, e.g., you had to change timezones when traveling by yourself. The Treo will automatically do that for you, but it turns out, it doesn't quite handle DST correctly.

Possible, but it's moot on other phones because the feature doesn't exist.

That's a different "screw-up", and harkens back to the debates we've had. Let's keep this focused on DST, not the fact that Microsoft has decided to slide appointments on a timezone change. In fact, Microsoft's not the only one; Apple does it as well with iCal. Anyway, that's offtopic.

--janak

Janak Parekh

That's actually a separate issue entirely. It's by design by Microsoft, and whether you like it or not is offtopic for this thread. Let's keep this ontopic. Thanks.

--janak