Entourage Time Zone

J

jrweiss-namibia

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel
Email Client: Exchange

Hi,
as a recent mover from XP/Vista/O2k7 to Mac/O2k8 I am quite disappointed with Entourage. It is not even coming closely to Outlook, crashes often, does not sync all (e.g. Notes), etc.
But the worst is that it does not support/offer the time zone that I configured on the Mac (Africa/Windhoek). Consequence is that meeting invites are out of sync. What can I do about that? Any tricks? Please let Entourage use the system time zone and not configure it's own stuff. Thanks.
Cheers, Jurgen
 
W

William Smith

Hi, as a recent mover from XP/Vista/O2k7 to Mac/O2k8 I am quite
disappointed with Entourage. It is not even coming closely to
Outlook, crashes often, does not sync all (e.g. Notes), etc. But the
worst is that it does not support/offer the time zone that I
configured on the Mac (Africa/Windhoek). Consequence is that meeting
invites are out of sync. What can I do about that? Any tricks? Please
let Entourage use the system time zone and not configure it's own
stuff.
Click to expand...

Hi Jurgen!

Entourage does use the Mac's system for determining time and time zones.
However, the reason it includes time zone support is that you may
schedule a meeting for a time zone different from the one you're
currently within.

And it does support your time zone (GMT +1), just not every city within
your time zone is listed. If I compare your location with other cities
in the same time zone then I see that you can use "Amsterdam, Berlin,
Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna". <http://www.worldtimezone.net/wtz008.php>

Be sure that the above time zone listing is selected as your default in
your Entourage preferences.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 
J

jrweiss-namibia

Hi Bill,
unfortenuately you are not correct. The Windhoek time zone is only equal to GMT+1 between April and September. During the other time it is equal to GMT+2. That is also the reason why Windows has a seperate time zone definition for Windhoek. I can use your suggestion but have to switch two times a year between GMT+1 and GMT+2, which is quite inconvinient. I cannot deploy Entourage to my customers sites and tell them "sorry, but you have to change manually twice a year, and dont forget or your meetings will be incorrectly scheduled".
In Windows you have a time zone editor to create your own time zone. Anything like this for Entourage?
Many thanks. best Regards, Jurgen
 
W

William Smith

Hi Bill, unfortenuately you are not correct. The Windhoek time zone
is only equal to GMT+1 between April and September. During the other
time it is equal to GMT+2. That is also the reason why Windows has a
seperate time zone definition for Windhoek. I can use your suggestion
but have to switch two times a year between GMT+1 and GMT+2, which is
quite inconvinient. I cannot deploy Entourage to my customers sites
and tell them "sorry, but you have to change manually twice a year,
and dont forget or your meetings will be incorrectly scheduled". In
Windows you have a time zone editor to create your own time zone.
Anything like this for Entourage? Many thanks. best Regards, Jurgen
Click to expand...

I was afraid that would be the case.

First, please be sure to let Microsoft know you need this corrected in
future versions by using the Help --> Send Feedback mechanism in any
Office application.

If you're feeling adventurous you can use a text editor to try editing
these two files, which I believe would help you define your own timezone:

*** WARNING! Duplicate these files first so that you have backups! ***

"/Applications/Microsoft Office
2008/Office/EntourageCore.framework/Versions/12/Resources/timezones.xml"

"/Applications/Microsoft Office
2008/Office/EntourageCore.framework/Versions/12/Resources/en.lproj/Timezones.ics"

I haven't looked a them extensively and I haven't tried modifying them
myself.

If you develop a solution I'd appreciate hearing what you did.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 
J

jrweiss-namibia

Hi Bill,

thanks, that's what I was looking for. And yes, I am adventurous :) Below follows what I added to the above files.

timezones.xml:
<key>75</key>
<dict>
<key>TZID</key>
<string>Windhoek</string>
<key>TZNAME</key>
<string>Africa/Windhoek</string>
</dict>

Timezones.ics:
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Windhoek
X-ENTOURAGE-TZID:75
X-ENTOURAGE-CFTIMEZONE:Africa/Windhoek
BEGIN:STANDARD
DTSTART:20060903T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=9
TZOFFSETFROM:+0100
TZOFFSETTO:+0200
TZNAME:Standard Time
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
DTSTART:20070401T030000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1;BYDAY=-1SU;BYMONTH=4
TZOFFSETFROM:+0200
TZOFFSETTO:+0100
TZNAME:Daylight Savings Time
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE

Testing hasn't been completed, but it should work.

Best regards, Jurgen
 
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