Calendar out in October 2005

D

David Fulcher

Here's a weird glitch. All my repeating appointments that occur between
October 1-30 appear 1 hour earlier than scheduled, then go back to
their proper spot from Oct 31 onwards. Also, if I try to enter a
day-long event, it is shown as occurring the day before, despite being
correct when edited.

Is this a bug, or is there a preference I very much don't udnerstand??

DF
 
M

Michel Bintener

This is an annoying behaviour, and I'm not sure if it's classified as a bug.
But the problem, I would assume, is caused by different time zones, i.e. the
time zone specified in Entourage's preferences and the one in your
appointments are not identical. Try changing the time zone where necessary
(either the preferences or the individual calendar entries), and I'm sure
you'll see Entourage behave the way it should. It seems as if Entourage sees
all-day entries not as entries linked to a specific day, but rather as
time-zone specific events that start at 0:00 and end at 23:59 on that same
day (or another, similar mechanism), which causes them to be shifted in the
calendar display when a different time zone is selected.
That's one of the things in Entourage which really annoy me, so I can feel
your pain.
 
N

Nathan Herring [MSFT]

I'm going to wager that this is a daylight savings time related problem.

What time zone / locale are you in? What setting are you using in
Entourage/Preferences.../General/Calendar/Default time zone for new events?
On one of these such events, on the Options toolbar button/Time Zone, what
is listed?

According to
<http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/g.html>, different parts of Australia
start their daylight savings at different times. Some start at the beginning
of October and some at the end.

-nh
 
M

Michel Bintener

Of course, daylight savings... should have struck me when I read the date.
However, just to make sure I was not completely crazy, I did some testing to
confirm what I've written in my earlier post, and here's what I have found
out:

I have to travel frequently between GMT and GMT+1 zones, both of which are
on daylight savings right now. I created several all-day events for the
birthdays of some contacts in my address book, and these events were created
when my system (and Entourage) was set on GMT+1 (can't remember if it was
DST or not). I'm currently in the UK, so I'm using my GMT settings once
again, and the birthday events have all been shifted to a day previous to
the intended day. When I open the event, it shows the correct date, and it
also shows that the time zone is GMT+1. When I now change the system's time
zone settings to GMT+1, all the events are displayed correctly in Entourage.
When I switch back to GMT, I can see the previously mentioned shifting
again, which I find extremely annoying. All-day events, in my opinion,
should not be linked to a specific time zone. There may be cases where this
could be useful, but in the case of birthdays for instance, it just doesn't
make sense at all, and it's extremely confusing. I'm not sure if many other
users have made the same observation, but I just thought I'd post it here,
as I started discussing this in my earlier response.

By the way, I also made a mistake in my earlier post, changing the time zone
in Entourage's preferences does of course NOT make a difference, at least
not instantaneously, as this sets the time zone for new events only.
Therefore, replace any occurrence of "Entourage's preferences" with "the
OS's time zone settings"
 
D

David Fulcher

Brilliant! Thanks to you both! i thought about daylight saving, but
couldn't quite workout why it reverted to normal after Oct 30! The
problem was that I had my timezone set to Hobart, as I couldn't see
Sydney (where I am) on the list, and figured that it is on the same
timezone to Sydney anyway! I have now found Sydney (bundled in with
Canberra - Melbourne), and the 'bug' is fixed!!. The problem between
Oct 1 and Oct 30 must represent the earlier entry into daylight savings
in Hobart - we must presumably be later, Oct 30, hence after this time,
we were both in synk!!
Thanks again.

David
 
M

Michel Bintener

In addition to my earlier post: I just discovered that the wrong display of
all-day events, i.e. the shift of an event to one day before the actual
date, only affects the view I work in most, week view. It also affects work
week, but I suppose that this is somehow related to week view. This
behaviour does not show up in either day or month view. I'm not sure if this
also applies to pre-SP2 versions of Entourage 2004, as I only noticed it now
that Entourage, after the update, had switched to month view. Anyway, I just
thought I should post this observation.
 
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