I, like something akin to 70% of the enterprise world, use Outlook as my PIM. I also travel a lot. I flip flop between the Eastern and Pacific timezones on a weekly basis. It’s this constant timezone hoping that makes all day events in Outlook a misery.
All day events in Outlook are for holidays and contact birthdays (automatically insterted), as well as, your own created all day or multi-day appointments.
The issue is that (1) all day events are tagged with the timezone that they were created in and (2) those timestamps are interpreted as 24-hour periods instead of “tags” on a given date.
What this means is, that if you create a birthday (say for dear ol’ Mom, on the second of March). The holiday will be created with the timezone that you happen to be set to at the moment of creation - say Pacific.
Now, when you use the helpful “swap timezone” feature in Outlook (implying that some part of the Outlook Program Management team realizes that some people work/live in more than one timezone) all hell breaks loose. Now, your all day event turns into a 24 hour appointment that spans two days. For our example, when you swap to Eastern (a difference of 3 hours for those that don’t live in either) Mom’s birthday now spans the 2nd and 3rd of March (11:59pm on the 2nd in Pacific time is 2:59am on the 3rd in Eastern).
Worse still, while Outlook 2007 finally moves timezone to a first class citizen by putting it on the appointment ribbon, it doesn’t work for all day appointments - You can create an all day in a timezone, but once created it is forever locked into the that timezone (opening one and trying to change it reveals that the timezone options are all greyed out).
You’re left with the feeling of “this isn’t what I wanted!” Better yet, when you block out vacaction time, or similar indicators you get this same skewed mess. Anniversaries are dates not time ranges, period. I contest that 99.99% of all uses for all day and multi-day events are also dates, not time ranges.
There is an argument in favor of this behavior, and I have spoken to some of the folks that advocate this view. The claim is that what if you wanted to “invite” someone to a multiday or all day event, you want it to translate to their timezone (say I wanted to invite someone in the India office to a multiday event on my calendar). For our two events to “line up” truely, they need to be locked to time and thus be timezone aware.
While this is a logical argument, the only thing I can figure about poeple who make it is that they are not ones that actually use all day appointments and deal with multiple timezones. (It’s actually a classic “engineering” argument for a feature – looking at it purely from a logical standpoint of math and not from the view of actually how people will use a feature.)
I’ve never seen someone use an all day appointment to build a meeting. At most, they’re used in invites to send out a “FYI: Steve will be on vacation” type of appointment that some people may want to have on their calendar too. However, I’ve seen people use all day appointments all the time for personal dates, anniversaries, and trip planning. I have to believe that if a serious user survey of this feature was made, it would be found that “sticky to date” is a lot more desired than “sticky to time”.
Alas, it still doesn’t work (as of Office 2007) and annoys me constantly. I end up leaving my machine in Pacific time even when I’m in the Eastern timezone just to avoid all the issues it cause (ex: you create some all day events in one timezone and others while you’re in another – blech what a mess on your calendar).
Interestingly, Windows Live calendar respects these types of appointments as “sticky to date”. Of course, this is not the case if you use Microsoft’s “Outlook Connector” glue that connects Outlook to Windows Live services. I haven’t tried it in the newly released Vista Windows Calendar.
21 responses so far ↓
me // March 1, 2007 at 8:02 pm |
I know your mother’s birthday is not the 2nd of march
Alex // August 4, 2007 at 5:23 am |
I am constantly annoyed by this shortcoming of MS Outlook … it is hard to believe that after more than 10 years of Outlook the issue is still unresolved. I happen to have input all birthdays (about two hundred) a few years ago when I was passing by Ecuador – now I’m stuck with the GYE-LIM-BOG timezone even when in Denmark!
Sean // September 14, 2007 at 1:40 pm |
I was reading this post, hoping you had a fix for the issue…
I travel a lot between Europe and North America, and it is extremely annoying that all my all-day events keep spanning over two days when I am in North America.
Steve Schreiber // September 14, 2007 at 5:03 pm |
Sean: Unfortunately no. I do not believe that there is a “fix” out there (as the Outlook team seems to feel this is the appropriate behavior). As my time zone travel is just a 3 hr difference, I’ve resigned myself to just always keeping my systems in Pacific time and doing a mental conversion.
chris // September 17, 2007 at 6:18 am |
View All Day Events Outlook could handle all day events much better than it does – two frequent complaints are that not all events are shown on the daily view and that events span two days.
The first issue is related to available screen space: you’ll see more events with higher resolutions and when Outlook is maximized with most toolbars and the status bar turned off. Turn on every available toolbar Outlook offers and you’ll see fewer all day events in the daily view.
Events span two days when the time zone or daylight time setting of the computer they were created on is not the time zone or daylight time setting the computer is now using. To fix, you need to adjust the time zone so the appointments are correct, Export the calendar to Excel and correct the time zone then Import.
Outlook 2007 offers some improvements for both problems – the all day event area scrolls so you can see all events and you can choose the start and end time zone when creating appointments. While it would be better if you could pin events and appointments to “this time period, in any zone”, giving users the option of selecting a time zone is a much needed start. Maybe next time…
Chuck Chambers // November 24, 2007 at 9:58 am |
Is there a good alternative to Outlook? I used Daytimer until it’s demise and still miss it.
Everything in Outlook, particularly the all day event issue, is too much of a hassle.
Will // December 12, 2007 at 10:50 pm |
@Alex — There is something you can do — see this article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667/en-us and the section “Move mode”. You’ll need to download the MS utility and launch it from the command line in the special move mode. But with that you should finally be able to switch all your birthdays to the correct time zone!
Joe // February 25, 2008 at 5:37 pm |
This is piss poor programming on Microsoft’s part. Why would someone schedule a 24 hour meeting? It makes much more sense to pin an all day event to the date and not a 24 hour time period. It sure would be nice if someone on the Outlook team would bother to listen to the customers for once.
Alan // April 16, 2008 at 10:32 am |
Glad I’m not the only one who has been driven mad by this. Ten years I’ve been waiting for Microsoft to fix it!
Interesting to see that they actually believe all-day appointments should work this way. As you say, classic problem of engineers pursuing a theoretical ideal without regard to how people actually use the product.
So WAKE UP Microsoft! And if you can’t work out how to fix it, give me a call.
Trouble // October 2, 2008 at 4:45 pm |
I manage a team vacation calendar for people in two time zones. The only way I have learned to fix it while keeping my sanity in tact is to have them put the actual date of the event in the subject. For example: John on vacation 10/3/08. That way I can read it without opening the appt. and mark the appropriate date. However, sometimes they forget and it truly is a pain in the you-know-where!
Ali // October 22, 2008 at 6:18 pm |
I finally got Vista and Office 2007 and I can’t believe this is still an issue. My office laptop is on Eastern time (so as to not screw up the calendar at the office) and my phone and home computer are on Pacific time. Needless to say, it’s a pain to synchronize everything.
Hey Microsoft, at least give the option to link the ‘all day event’ to either the time or the date. This is what I hate about too much automation.
Harvey S. Cohen // December 31, 2008 at 6:30 pm |
This problem affects everyone who lives in a place that has Daylight Savings Time for part of the year. When I make an all-day event that occurs after the next bi-annual time change, it is displaced to 1:00 AM.
Clearly engineered by someone who doesn’t actually have to use their product.
Steve Schreiber // January 3, 2009 at 3:19 pm |
Harvey,
What you describe shouldn’t happen if everything is setup correctly. Every appointment, when created, is stamped with the originating time zone. So, if you’re in the US Eastern time zone and it’s stamped with an identifier for that (GMT -5). In addition, this time zone identifier also has any daylight savings adjustment embedded into it. So, your all day appointments should stay (as should your inline ones) in their appropriate places when the OS adjusts for daylight savings. All that’s needed is that you let the OS do the time adjusting (e.g. via the “Automatically Adjust for Daylight Savings Time” feature in Windows).
If you’re doing this, as it’s the default, and it’s still not working then you might have old appointments (very old at this point) that were created before the US Congress changed the dates for daylight savings. If this is the case, then these old appointments will have incorrectly embedded time change data in them. The fix for this was an optional patch to Outlook that enumerated through all your appointments in your Outlook calendar and adjusted the time zone info to the new US information.
Otherwise, I’m not sure why you’d be having this problem if you’re staying in one time zone and only dealing with that zone’s regular bi-annual time swap.
steven // January 8, 2009 at 5:46 pm |
I know this post is very old, but I just stumbled upon it and have all the same gripes. Check out the official M$ answer:
When you have all-day events on your Calendar and then change the time zone, the all-day events span two days instead of one.
Outlook treats anniversaries, holidays, and birthdays as all-day events (an all-day event is defined from midnight to midnight in the local time zone). When the time zones change, all-day events move. Therefore, when you change the computer’s time zone, the all-day event moves to display in the new time zone. An event, such as a holiday or birthday, will appear in the Calendar on two consecutive days. For example, a birthday could appear from 6 A.M. one day to 6 A.M. the next day.
You can do one of the following:
* Use the additional time zone feature in Outlook to display the local time zone and do not change the operating system time zone.
* Correct each all-day event for the current time zone setting.
* Change the time zone back to the one used when the items were created.
Thanks MS, that is all very useful information. Jerks
steven // January 8, 2009 at 5:50 pm |
ps
Here is the link.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP010223091033.aspx
And here’s the last question on there:
ou need appointments to be at fixed times no matter what time zone you are in.
You want an appointment to show on the Calendar at a fixed time no matter what the time zone is. For example, you want to be reminded to take your medication at the same absolute time regardless of the time zone you are in. However, when you change time zones, the appointment changes to reflect the new time zone.
Outlook can’t force an appointment to remain fixed when the time zone changes. If you need the appointment to stay at a fixed time, you should not change your current time zone. You can add the additional time zone to track the other time zone times. To change the time zone setting in Outlook without changing the times for each of your appointments, you must export the data from your Calendar folder, change the time zone setting, and then import the data into Outlook.
Cridgit // January 23, 2009 at 12:34 am |
I can’t believe some of the above responses from MS – rationalizing dumb design.
How hard can it be to implement such a simple solution which is obviously important to a lot of people? Add a checkbox called “Absolute time” when making an appointment, then display it as local time in the calendar if ticked or leave it as is if unticked. A couple of hours programming – we know it doesn’t get tested
Shannon // January 26, 2009 at 4:29 pm |
I just went from GMT-7 to GMT-10 , then back to GMT-7. All of my “all day” events are now on the calendar the day before they were originally scheduled.
I’ve found threads similar to this dating back years. Is Microsoft ever going to fix this problem or will we be in time zone hell forever?
CSMR // February 15, 2009 at 12:30 am |
Please vote here to encourage Microsoft to fix the all-day event issue:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?cat=&lang=en&cr=US&guid=&sloc=en-us&dg=microsoft.public.outlook.calendaring&tid=470ccedc-c74d-49ad-8e44-a10e5bd84f2b&mid=470ccedc-c74d-49ad-8e44-a10e5bd84f2b&rmid=470ccedc-c74d-49ad-8e44-a10e5bd84f2b&helpful=1&p=1&stgxml=http%3a%2f%2fwww.microsoft.com%2foffice%2fcommunity%2fen-us%2fsettings.xml
Christopher // December 13, 2009 at 2:53 pm |
Go to this link and follow the instructions, especially after the install.
Then you will have resolved this.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=%20E343A233-B9C8-4652-9DD8-AE0F1AF62568&displaylang=en
Cridgit // December 14, 2009 at 11:53 am |
Chris, thank you for posting this link. Too bad I moved over to Gmail about 9 months ago but it sure would have made my life easier for years (and maybe kept me on Outlook)
Eddie // January 2, 2010 at 12:41 pm |
Chris,
This looks like it is a good workaround.
Three questions though.
1) I cannot see any options when running the tool. Does it change old appointments or just future ones? (I have appointments going back 10 years that I wouldn’t want changed!)
2) What does it do when you have invited someone to an appointment? Is it changed for them as well?
3) Can it just change all day appointments? Most future timed appointments are in for the right timezone.