Broken Appointment Thanks to Outlook and WMDC

[Mike Temporale]

<p>This morning I awoke to an appointment reminder on my phone. It's giving me the 15 minute reminder that my daughter&rsquo;s dance class starts at 7:00am. The problem here, is that I know the class starts at 11:00am, not 7. So what's going on? I check the actual appointment times in the calendar and as you can see below its marked as 7:00am. So I checked the data and time settings to make sure that the time zone and the time are actually correct. Hey, what do you know, they're just fine. So the phone actually thinks my appointment starts at 7 and not 11. </p><p><img alt="" border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/spt/auto/1189861992.usr3.jpg" /></p><p>My wife sent this appointment, so I'll just resend it and then resync with my laptop.&nbsp; <a target="_blank" href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/news/show/22905/windows-mobile-device-center-and-vista-the-sad-reality-of-a-failed-combination.html">That won't be easy</a>, but it should fix things, right? Wrong.&nbsp; It turns out that Outlook on the desktop has this appointment at the right time. It's just when it gets sync'ed to my phone that it breaks. I checked a number of other appointments and all of them are fine. It's just this one that doesn't seem to work. As you can imagine, I'm less than thrilled that this appointment is off, and who knows how many others might suffer from this in the future. Right now, I can't seem to find any in the coming weeks, but that doesn't mean&nbsp;that there aren't some in the next month or two.&nbsp; I've included a snap shot of my Outlook calendar after the jump.&nbsp;You can see the appointment with the correct time posted there.&nbsp; </p><p>Has anyone else seen this type of error before? I've had my fair share of sync related problems but the actual data to be sync'ed was never compromised. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><div style="PAGE-BREAK-AFTER: always"><span style="DISPLAY: none">&nbsp;</span></div><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This&nbsp;picture of my Outlook calendar and the one above of Outlook Mobile were taken while the device was connected and finished sync'ing.&nbsp;One would&nbsp;expect that they match. Argh....&nbsp;</p><p><img alt="" border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/spt/auto/1189861962.usr3.jpg" /></p>

[ctmagnus]

Does deleting it on the desktop, syncing, recreating it, and syncing again correct the issue?

It seems to me that I had this issue once long ago and that corrected it. It was something to do with the pim database on the device. And it was just the one appointment that it happened to. And it hasn't happened since. [insert cross-fingered alien smiley here]

[Rocco Augusto]

This is a new feature of Outlook Mike, this is that magical feature that tells you that 11am is obviously way to late to have dance class and she should have it at 7am instead ;)

Lately on the misses T-Mobile SDA, it has been resetting the time to August 1st, 1969 and then all of her appointment alarms go off at once. So the good news is, at least you only have to dismiss one appointment and not all of them! :D

[freitasm]

Some things to check:

1 - Your wife PC's timezone may be wrong.
2 - Your own PC's timezone may be wrong.
3 - Your Outlook configuration is wrong. Click Tools | Options | Calendar Options | Advanced | Timezone and you will see two timezones. These can be set regardless of the system timezone.

If the appointments you entered yourself are correct but appointments received from your wife are wrong I'd check 1 or 3.

[Mike Temporale]

Does deleting it on the desktop, syncing, recreating it, and syncing again correct the issue?

Messy, but yes. I did try that, twice. And as soon as it sync's to the device the time is wrong. :(

[Mike Temporale]

This is a new feature of Outlook Mike, this is that magical feature that tells you that 11am is obviously way to late to have dance class and she should have it at 7am instead ;)

I tell ya, it sure got me moving quickly this morning!

Lately on the misses T-Mobile SDA, it has been resetting the time to August 1st, 1969 and then all of her appointment alarms go off at once. So the good news is, at least you only have to dismiss one appointment and not all of them! :D

My old SP5m is doing that. Must be something faulty on the internal battery. It shouldn't run out that quick. Heck the Tanager I have still keeps time - when I start it up. ;)

[Mike Temporale]

Some things to check:

1 - Your wife PC's timezone may be wrong.
2 - Your own PC's timezone may be wrong.
3 - Your Outlook configuration is wrong. Click Tools | Options | Calendar Options | Advanced | Timezone and you will see two timezones. These can be set regardless of the system timezone.

If the appointments you entered yourself are correct but appointments received from your wife are wrong I'd check 1 or 3.

I checked 1 & 2 but they're correct. I forgot about #3, but I just checked and it's set correctly as well. :confused:

The weird thing is that it's just this appointment. My wife and I trade invites all the time and this is the only one that's wrong. The down side is that my daughters dance class runs for the next 10 weeks or so. :(

[Rocco Augusto]

did you try deleting it of of your handset and the desktop and then creating the appointment on the handset then syncing that to the desktop? basically, the exact opposite of what ctmagnus suggested :D

[Mike Temporale]

did you try deleting it of of your handset and the desktop and then creating the appointment on the handset then syncing that to the desktop? basically, the exact opposite of what ctmagnus suggested :D

Hrm.... I did delete from the device. But I haven't re-created it on the device. Maybe I'll try that later today and see if it changes anything.

[dwest218]

I tell ya, it sure got me moving quickly this morning!



My old SP5m is doing that. Must be something faulty on the internal battery. It shouldn't run out that quick. Heck the Tanager I have still keeps time - when I start it up. ;)


You are correct. The internal battery is dead so anytime you shutdown the phone and take the battery out the internal time is not kept. For some reason on the sp5 and sp5m models this was a real problem with the internal battery.

[Jason Dunn]

Bizarre - I haven't see this problem myself...hopefully deleting on both and re-creating it won't result in the same problem.

[Foxbat121]

From the screen shot, I think you're using Outlook 2007. Could it be that you're using advanced feature of Outlook 2007 that your phone does not support? I know there is a talk about Microsoft offers timezone neutural events in Office 2007/

[LelandHendrix]

Check the location of the original appointment. Is it set to a locale? Mine gave me similar grief once, honestly--almost identical to what you're saying.

On either my TyTn or one of my pda's my schedule would change times based on if it thought that the appointment was in a different location (outlook would not)

I'll rack my brain about what exactly this was and get back to you, but I'm sure I've seen it.

[Mike Temporale]

Check the location of the original appointment. Is it set to a locale? Mine gave me similar grief once, honestly--almost identical to what you're saying.

Thanks, but I've done that. All computers have the same time zone and Outlook is set to the correct time zone as well. There's nothing wrong with any of the other appointments that my wife and I have sent between us. Just this individual one. :mad: