Entourage user's time 1-hour off

B

Boettcher, Scott

All,

We¹ve just begun moving to Entourage (SP2) on our new Active Directory
infrastructure. Many Mac users are getting phone calls that their emails
show up in the recipient¹s inbox +1 hour ­ i.e., if I send an email at
2:00PM, it has a time stamp of 3:00PM in the user¹s inbox.
Clocks on the servers and desktops/laptops are all correct, and is the time
zone in the OS and Entourage.

The kicker is that not ALL recipients see this, and we can¹t find any
patterns so far.
Any ideas would be graciously welcomed.

SB
 
M

Metritype

Can't tell from your message if any of the recipients are in a
different time zone. The "sent" time on a message I receive is stamped
with the time it was in MY time zone at the time the message was sent.
In other words, if my daughter in Florida sends a message to me in
Arizona at 9 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, that message will have a
time-stamp of 6 p.m. Mountain Standard Time.
 
B

Boettcher, Scott

It happens whether the receiver is in the same time zone or another.
Here's the scoop (sorry, it's sometimes difficult to explain properly
online)

I send an email to another user at 2:00PM
He gets it (same time zone) at 2:00PM, but the time on the message in his
inbox is 3:00PM
So, it's sorting at the top of his inbox with an incorrect time stamp.

And the truly odd thing is that it only happens with certain people - no
consistent connection between Mac/PC/Server/Time Zone - nothing.

Can't find any clues.

This is one truly odd problem, and it's getting more common. So far, it
only stems from Macs running Entourage.

Now here's the second kicker: I setup my email profile on another G5 next
to me, and the emails all have the correct time stamp.

Keep in mind that the Mac that does have the issue only has the issue with
SOME receivers.

If someone can figure this one out, I will send gifts aplenty!

SB
 
M

Metritype

Again professing NOT to be an expert, it sounds as though those
receivers have their clocks set wrong. But that's too obvious so it
can't be that.
 
B

Boettcher, Scott

This is not user error, clock's being wrong, etc.
This is a bug.
It happens with all recipients of Entourage user's emails.
It's either Entourage alone, on in combination with Exchange 2003 servers.

The scripts and other work-arounds do us no good. Time stamps are off -
period.
I wish MS folks would acknowledge this bug - it's real, and it's a big black
eye for Macs and Entourage.

SB
 
N

Nathan Herring [MSFT]

AFAIK, we have not seen this problem. Stating that all of the clocks and
timezones are correct may be true, but if Entourage is having a particular
error with some combination of time zones and server clock issues and
whatnot, we'd need to know what those settings are.

I would love to have:
1) An attachment of such a sample mail with the improper dates.
2) The date/time/time zone at the time of the sending as reported by System
Preferences.
3) The date/time/time zone at the time of the sending as reported by the
Exchange server's date/time preferences.
4) The current time zone as reported by OWA's Options/Calendar Options.

Between those settings, we may be able to set up a reproduction case
in-house. Before then, we cannot determine whether it's a bug or not.

-nh

P.S. Do you _really_ think it's a _big_ black eye for Entourage? I don't
know how many eyes you think Entourage has, but the data loss and calendar
printing problems that we're hearing reports of seem to outweigh this
particular one in relevance.
 
J

John H

You are right on. For me, it also is occuring with meeting requests.
Yesterday I received a meeting request and it showed up on my calendar
as occuring at 11:30 am even though it was clearly a meeting to be held
at 10:30 am. I checked everything local to my machine and on the
machine of originator of the meeting request and nothing was out of
whack. So those who suggested it was 'pebkac' (problem exists between
keyboard and chair) were rather insulting.

This didn't happen in Entourage prior to SP2, doesn't happen in Outlook
2001, doesn't happen in Outlook 2003 or XP for Windows.

Micorsoft, you listening? Fix this bug.
 
B

Boettcher, Scott

Let me tell you Nathan, this is a BIG problem for our environment. It never
happened BEFORE we introduced Entourage.
I would love to have:
1) An attachment of such a sample mail with the improper dates.
Click to expand...

* As has been posted - the header info shows OK if you open the
email. In ANY view mode, the received time is + 1 hour. Understand, when I
send emails to PC people, the same thing happens to email from me in their
inbox, +1 hour. It totally screws up everyone's organization.

2) The date/time/time zone at the time of the sending as reported by System
Preferences.
Click to expand...

* All people have been in the same time zone and even on the same
server! But it does happen across servers and time zones too.

3) The date/time/time zone at the time of the sending as reported by the
Exchange server's date/time preferences.
Click to expand...

* See above - this never happened before Entourage. Clients that
were on Outlook last night and Entourage today exhibit this issue.
4) The current time zone as reported by OWA's Options/Calendar Options.
Click to expand...

* Sending emails via OWA is fine - no time issues, which is why we
can say assuredly that it's Entourage.

I will send you ANYTHING you need - let me know what it is you specifically
need, and it's yours.
Since others outside of my company have the same problem, it's not just
me/us.
At this point, if I get another phone call or email telling me my emails are
+1 hour, I'm going to start forwarding them to you! :) Then you'll see how
much of a PITA it is...lol

SB
 
B

Boettcher, Scott

Right John.
I don't mind someone asking if I did something stupid once, but being an IT
guy for almost 20-years, I've learned to dot my "I"s and cross my "t"s
before even asking a question.
We've hammered out every possible thing that we could be doing wrong, and
it's just not us.
All Macs and their emails worked fine before the move to Entourage.
I don't know if SP2 triggered this or not - I didn't migrate anyone with
Entourage without SP2 due to the otherwise HUGE improvements.
I'm not mad, and I'm not bashing MS here - I've been a huge supporter of the
MacBU - but I need this addressed and a fix in place.
It's embarrassing in my PC-centric IT world, and it does cause trouble for
people getting emails from Entourage users.
We traffic huge amounts of content, and timestamps are of major importance.

As I stated to Nathan, I'm willing to do whatever I can to help them help
us.

SB
 
N

Nathan Herring [MSFT]

With calendar events, there's a whole new set of data that is required --
the iCal data in the invitation is more important. It has its own time/date
and timezone information. If you could attach such a message to a post, we
could perhaps reproduce the problem. Until then, there isn't much we can do
to fix this supposed bug.

-nh
 
N

Nathan Herring [MSFT]

I will send you ANYTHING you need - let me know what it is you specifically
need, and it's yours.
Since others outside of my company have the same problem, it's not just
me/us.
At this point, if I get another phone call or email telling me my emails are
+1 hour, I'm going to start forwarding them to you! :) Then you'll see how
much of a PITA it is...lol

SB
Click to expand...

I specifically told you what I needed in the previous post. You did not give
them to me, but rather described that they were "OK". To reiterate, I need:

1) An attachment of such a sample mail with the improper dates.
2) The date/time/time zone at the time of the sending as reported by System
Preferences.
3) The date/time/time zone at the time of the sending as reported by the
Exchange server's date/time preferences.
4) The current time zone as reported by OWA's Options/Calendar Options.

Talking about the attachment or talking about the date/time/timezone without
actually giving it is not sufficient to help me track down the problem.

-nh
 
N

Nathan Herring [MSFT]

And to clarify, by "supposed bug" I mean that it may very well be a bug, but
that I do not have the evidence in front of me that would make me say it was
an actual bug. Unfortunately, there are a fairly large number of outstanding
bugs in this category. :/
 
F

Frary, Sue

I am also seeing incorrect time stamps when an Entourage message is sent to
a PC user with Outlook. In the process, one hour is added to the time stamp
on the PC end.

No, the Mac time zone is not wrong, either in Preferences or in Entourage.
The PC end is also correctly set. Something between Entourage and Outlook
is adding one hour. This does not happen Mac to Mac in my experience,
either Entourage to Entourage or Entourage to Mail.app. So it would appear
to be in how Entourage communicates a time stamp to Outlook. Calendar time
stamping appears to be ok on both sides, so this is something strange in
mail messages - perhaps in the translation from the mbox format to whatever
format Outlook uses?

Outlook messages sent from the PC side arrive in Entourage (Exchange
account) just fine.

This would not appear to be the ever popular "Mac user pilot error". This
would seem to be a bug either in Entourage or Exchange/Outlook.

It also seems to have only occurred since the last SP (2) for Entourage.
Go figure.

Sue
 
S

subterranean

I have been seeing this issue as well, and I think it happened on the
day the exchange server was upgraded to Windows 2003. I did not
upgrade Entourage (or I don't think I did, I don't know how long it
took before people started to complain that all of my emails are coming
from the future).

I have tested multiple different Mac machines and sending to/from
PC/MAC and it is a definitely some sort of bug. The "Received By"
headers on emails sent from a PC are correct, but the Received By
(written by the Exchange server) when Entourage is the client are 1
hour off. Sending to the same SMTP (Exchange) server with Apple Mail
or some other client works correctly. Sending with Entourage through
some othe SMTP relay first works correctly.

Is there any new info on this? It is incredibly annoying.

Bryan Davis
Lead Engineer
BEA Systems
 
N

Nathan Herring [MSFT]

There are one or more service packs that you can apply to Exchange Server
2003 SP1 that cause the issue. I am not sure which one(s) is/are
responsible. However, if your Exchange administrator rolls out Exchange
Server 2003 SP2, it should be fixed. Alternatively, there's another hotfix
for Exchange suggested on the Mactopia website that will fix it (the fix is
about permissions issues, but it addresses other concerns as well).

Or, it should be hidden for this next half of the year, since we just made
the switch back to standard time. Perhaps by then, your Exchange servers
will be updated to SP2.

-nh
 
B

Boettcher, Scott

Sadly, SP2 breaks Blackberry Enterprise Servers (BES) and our Exchange team
won't install any of these, which I can understand.

SB
 
B

Bill Bryson

Nathan,

Are you still monitoring this thread? You have been very helpful in the
past and I was hoping you could help with the problem with not being able to
delegate in Entourage 2004 SP2 (at least in our environment?)

Bill
 
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