all day events for different time zones

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Outlook all day events - 26 Sep 2006 18:25 GMT

Our company and organization has people in many time zones. Whenever someone
posts an all day event to our group who is in a different time zone, Outlook
changes that event to span multiple days. This messes up the other peoples
calendar making it look like a multiple day spanning event. When Outlook has
an all day event, it should ignore time zone and schedule it as an all day
event no matter what other time zones are involved.

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Brian Tillman - 26 Sep 2006 19:34 GMT

Outlook all day events <Outlook all day events@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

> Our company and organization has people in many time zones. Whenever
> someone posts an all day event to our group who is in a different
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> ignore time zone and schedule it as an all day event no matter what
> other time zones are involved.

But an all day event in one time zone DOES span multiple days in another
time zone. Why do you want Outlook to lie to you?

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Brian Tillman

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Trevor - 16 Nov 2006 18:07 GMT

Brian,

It is ridiculous that you are taking MS side on this. Yes, an all day event
is from 12:00 to 12:00 in one time zone, and 11:00 to 11:00 in another. But,
you are completely missing the point.

In our case, we are not focused on TIME. We are focused on DAY. I just
want to notate what city my people will be in on any particular day. Outlook
time zone makes everything span several days, so it is difficult to properly
decipher where they are on any given day.

Another example is vacation. If the guy on the east coast puts a vacation
in as an all day event, when I read it from the central time zone I see two
days of vacation.

Yes, Outlook is working correctly by fixing time zone issues for me. But, I
don't want it to. It is wreaking havoc on us and our people who are
interpreting the schedules.

I've been reading all day how to solve this problem and there is not one
solution I can find. Only complaints from users and people telling the users
to use Outlook differently. It is very frustrating.

-Trevor

> Outlook all day events <Outlook all day events@discussions.microsoft.com>
> wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> But an all day event in one time zone DOES span multiple days in another
> time zone. Why do you want Outlook to lie to you?

Reply to this Message

Brian Tillman - 16 Nov 2006 19:20 GMT

> It is ridiculous that you are taking MS side on this. Yes, an all
> day event is from 12:00 to 12:00 in one time zone, and 11:00 to 11:00
> in another. But, you are completely missing the point.

I don't believe I am, and I'm only "taking MS' side on it" because, as a
scientist, I believe it's correct. You, in fact, acknowledge its
correctness yourself.

> In our case, we are not focused on TIME. We are focused on DAY.

Since when does a day not begin at midnight and end at midnight IN YOUR OWN
TIMEZONE?

> Another example is vacation. If the guy on the east coast puts a
> vacation in as an all day event, when I read it from the central time
> zone I see two days of vacation.

No, you see a 24 hour event that happens to span portions of two days

> Yes, Outlook is working correctly by fixing time zone issues for me.
> But, I don't want it to. It is wreaking havoc on us and our people
> who are interpreting the schedules.

So you do want it to lie to you.

> I've been reading all day how to solve this problem and there is not
> one solution I can find.

That's because Outlook is not broken.

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Brian Tillman

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marc.home@gmail.com - 28 Nov 2006 15:36 GMT

We are experiencing a lot of problems with this as well because we have
offices in 2 different time zones. You can look at this problem 2
different ways.

If there's an event that's going to happen in a specific time zone that
is an all day even then yes it should adjust properly when viewed from
another time zone. If the even is happening in our Toronto office and
our guys in Calgary are viewing the event then it should adjust the
time and show the time for their time zone.

However there are times when you are only concerned with the date and
not the time. Our office is going to be closed Friday December 29th
this year. They are giving us the day off with pay. Regardless of
whether you are in our Toronto office or our Calgary office you have
the 29th off. The Outlook appointment was created from our Toronto
office and was added as an all-day event. When the guys in our Calgary
office looked at the schedule the event spans 2 days and showed that
they have the 28th and the 29th office. I agree that Outlook is just
doing what it's programmed to do but it still isn't correct. I'm just
glad we noticed this before we had people not show up for work on the
28th.

Outlook should have the option to create an all day event that is not
dependent on a start and end time. It's all day on a specific day and
that's all. Store the event with the date and don't store a time.

Another option would be to have a flag on appointments to make them
time zone independent. When you save the appointment Outlook just
stores the time and date without converting to it's universal time and
when that appointment is viewed from a different time zone it would
just show with the time it was saved with instead of having to convert
from universal time zone to the current time zone.

I don't think it's matter of saying that this is a bug in Outlook or
that it's broken. Outlook is just doing what it was programmed to do.
The sad part is that I've been searching the net and have found many
complaints about this with older versions of Outlook. Why couldn't this
have been "fixed" before releasing a new version? I'm a developer so I
know what I've proposed above is not earth shattering.

It's surprising that with the number of offices that Microsoft has
world wide that this wouldn't have been a thorn in their side as well.
Maybe they use a third party scheduling application :)

> > It is ridiculous that you are taking MS side on this. Yes, an all
> > day event is from 12:00 to 12:00 in one time zone, and 11:00 to 11:00
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
>
> That's because Outlook is not broken.

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Brian Tillman - 28 Nov 2006 21:21 GMT

> Outlook should have the option to create an all day event that is not
> dependent on a start and end time. It's all day on a specific day and
> that's all. Store the event with the date and don't store a time.

I thought I read that OL 2007 handles this better.

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Brian Tillman

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