All day annual events and iPod

[Chris Ridd]

I don't know if anyone else is using the new Sync Services support in
Entourage 2004 to sync their calendar to their iPod (via iTunes)?

It pretty much works, and is pretty neat. My contacts come across too,
which is very nice.

Except... I just noticed that if you create an "all day" event in
Entourage that repeats annually (eg a birthday) then it appears on the
iPod on that day *and the next day*.

If you create an "all day" event on the calendar via iCal that repeats
the same way, it appears correctly in Entourage and it appears
correctly on the iPod.

The only difference I can see on the events on the iPod is that the
iCal-created event starts at 12:00AM and the Entourage-created event
starts at 1:00AM on both days.

Could the fact I'm in GMT +0100 currently (with iCal and Entourage both
set to use timezones) be the problem?

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Chris Ridd]

Could the fact I'm in GMT +0100 currently (with iCal and Entourage both
set to use timezones) be the problem?

I note that if I use iCal to toggle the "All day" setting twice on
these events, the resulting event gets synced properly.

Curioser and curioser...

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

It's hard to know whether something in the Sync operation is ignoring the
timezone, or if this is perhaps a manifestation of the bug in Entourage 2004
with recent OS's (Apple changed the summer time protocol but Entourage
hasn't yet) whereby people in certain time zones get the "Your time zone
doesn't correspond" banner (which is not true) and *synching from iCal is
one hour off*. Do you see a one-hour displacement in Entourage for
(non-all-day) events synched from iCal?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Chris Ridd]

It's hard to know whether something in the Sync operation is ignoring the
timezone, or if this is perhaps a manifestation of the bug in Entourage 2004
with recent OS's (Apple changed the summer time protocol but Entourage
hasn't yet) whereby people in certain time zones get the "Your time zone
doesn't correspond" banner (which is not true) and *synching from iCal is
one hour off*. Do you see a one-hour displacement in Entourage for
(non-all-day) events synched from iCal?

No, short events added to the Entourage calendar using Entourage and
iCal don't have any displacement. They also sync to the iPod correctly.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Chris Ridd]

No, short events added to the Entourage calendar using Entourage and
iCal don't have any displacement. They also sync to the iPod correctly.

I grabbed the "iSync-Entourage.ics" file from my iPod to see how the
actual events differed.

iCal writes an all-day event like this:

DTSTART:20060626
DTEND:20060627


Entourage writes an all-day event with a timezone (and not the one I'm
in) and times:

DTSTART;TZID=utc:20060626T000000
DTEND;TZID=utc:20060627T000000


I'm not sure if I understand why an "all-day" event should have
associated time information and *any* timezone information, but that
looks like the problem.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

No, short events added to the Entourage calendar using Entourage and
iCal don't have any displacement. They also sync to the iPod correctly.

That wasn't the question. I asked what happened to "short events" made in
iCal (or on the iPod) - i.e. synced FROM the iPod. Isn't that where you say
the all-day events are going wrong?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I grabbed the "iSync-Entourage.ics" file from my iPod to see how the
actual events differed.

iCal writes an all-day event like this:

DTSTART:20060626
DTEND:20060627

That's a short-hand. No wonder things are going wrong.

Entourage writes an all-day event with a timezone (and not the one I'm
in) and times:

DTSTART;TZID=utc:20060626T000000
DTEND;TZID=utc:20060627T000000

All-day events DO begin and end at midnight, so there's nothing wrong with a
T000000 time on the date. The problem is that the wrong time zone is being
given here. utc is GMT whereas you're on British Summer Time at the moment.
That may be the daylight-savings time zone disparity (since OS 10.4.3 or
thereabouts) I was referring to, or it could be a different bug, I suppose.

I'm not sure if I understand why an "all-day" event should have
associated time information and *any* timezone information, but that
looks like the problem.

All dates have a time and a time zone. "DTSTART:20060626" is just a
shorthand for "20060626T000000". iCal and Entourage are making different
assumptions as to what the time zone is. iCal is assuming "current local
time zone" (BST = +0100) whereas Entourage is assuming (incorrectly) GMT =
+0000. If iCal didn't take shortcuts but spelled it out, it would have
avoided the error in Entourage. That 's why you're not getting errors with
"short" events: iCal specifies the correct time zone with the correct time.
So it's Entourage's daylight-savings-time-zone bug, but it's only appearing
with all-day events since it's only then that Entourage has to do the time
and time zone evaluation (which it's doing wrong), whereas for for short
events iCal is specifying the correct time zone so Entourage just copies it
and there's no error.


--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Chris Ridd]

That wasn't the question. I asked what happened to "short events" made in
iCal (or on the iPod) - i.e. synced FROM the iPod. Isn't that where you say
the all-day events are going wrong?

The iPod is read-only, you can only sync calendars to it.

The problem is certain encodings of all-day events synced *to* the iPod
appear on multiple days.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[Chris Ridd]

On 6/26/06 12:06 AM, in article (e-mail address removed), "Chris Ridd"

The problem is that the wrong time zone is being
given here. utc is GMT whereas you're on British Summer Time at the moment.
That may be the daylight-savings time zone disparity (since OS 10.4.3 or
thereabouts) I was referring to, or it could be a different bug, I suppose.

Yes, I think that could be the problem. Are there any technical details
of this bug anywhere?

Cheers,

Chris