What are best practices for dealing with All Day Events in different time zones. So if an all day event for July 5 is set as EST. In the shared calendar it is will span two days in MST. 10pm-10pm the next day. 

Can anyone recommend best practice or modifications that can be made to handle this. 

Thanks,

SJMP

Hi,

I saw someone has similar requirement like you, and it has been answered by Jahawk. See here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/outlook/thread/c7c1b777-cb58-4b56-a4ee-7efe06117856

Jennifer,

That link is a different issue. We want the meeting to reflect the correct time. But for All Day events we do not want it to adjust it to a two days even. Midnight - Midnight EST becomes 10pm - 10pm MST. If there is a Wed All day event we want it to show up in all time zones as an all day event. 

So basically All Day events should be treated differently then a regular meeting when start and end times are specified.

We also cannot start the All day event at specific times to accommodate different zones as it will take up the entire calendar space and not be place on the top where all day events below. 

Last - the link you provided is to use a script. But Admin's that manage the calendars in company's are not going to be able to write up a script for meeting events. This sends us back to 1985. These are non technical people. This would imply the the IT department has to write up a scripts many times per week and admins cannot set up all day events anymore. There has to be a solution to this. 

Hi,

Sorry to reply late. I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. There might be some time delay. Appreciate your patience.

Hi,

When you click the All Day Event option, the appointment is scheduled from midnight on the first day to midnight on the next day. But when you view the calendar in a different time zone than the one in which the appointment was created, the time is adjusted for that time zone based on the regional time settings on that computer.  

This makes the appointment appear to span over two days when you view it from another time zone, however this is ‘By Design’ and expected behavior within Outlook.

Workaround:
===========

Schedule the event for the beginning and end of your normal workday instead of choosing the All Day option, and then mark the event as needed (Free, Tentative, or Busy).

Also, Microsoft recommends that you not create events that span over the midnight time frame unless your normal working hours include those times.

For more information see the following KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/262451

Regards,

Harveyy - MSFT

I get that it is by design. But the workaround is not reasonable. If you schedule this from 8am-6pm EST then it takes a huge block away from the calendar. If there are 10 all-day events on one day, the calendar is not going to be usable for actual meetings set during the day. 

It might be worth the time by MS to have an option to allow or disallow All Day events to adjust or not based on time zone. this would really be the only way I can think to address it. To have an option in the All Day Events - that says hard set the time to local exchange server, override the local time zone adjustment. 

Thanks - SJMP

Hi,

I do not disagree with you regarding the workaround, but it is the best we can do with the current product.

I will pass along the suggestions you have made regarding the how to handle this scenario.

Regards,

Harveyy - MSFT

• Marked as answer by Sally Tang Monday, May 09, 2011 9:20 AM
• Unmarked as answer by SJMP Thursday, December 01, 2011 4:44 PM

Is there by chance any update/status on Best practice for All Day Events spanning different Time Zones and not showing up as a two days event? 

Can someone please provide me with a technical explanation on why this occurs?

Thanks - SJMP

Look like it occurs because it was an original oversite and was thought to be an inconvenience that MSFT customers would just put up with. Interestingly, old Lotus Notes doesn't do this.

I agree it is not reasonable. I work internationally and this is a problem every time I cross a timeline. Even now I have my laptop, phone and iPad all set for the same timezone and the all day event shows as 1am-1am in Outlook. Opening the details, it shows as all day in the current time zone, so there's nothing wrong there. My clock is in the right time zone. So I cannot change anything.

It becomes even more complicated when planning for meetings in another time zone. If my devices change automatically the zone, all my appointments change! So I keep my zone to where I live and work and just change the time manually (and turn off automatic time updates too).

It's a real pain! Strange Microsoft hasn't created a solution to this.

Is there really not a solution for this - sans write scripts to accompany each individual ALL DAY EVENT> - 

What version of Outlook do you use? All day events created in Outlook 2010 should not be an issue (if all are using Outlook 2010).

Whether Outlook 2010's all day events work correctly on smartphones depends on the phone.

Diane,  with reference to your last comment that it should be OK if all are using Outlook 2010;  When I setup an All Day event and then invite someone to the All Day event who is in a different time zone, then in the other person's calendar, the event does not show as an all day event for the day I selected, but is over 2 days, with the event out by the number of hours difference in the 2 time zones!  My calendar looks correct.  We are both using Outlook 2010 and both are Exchange (using Office365).  Did I understand your comments correctly?

Any thoughts on solving my problem?   Tks  Michael

In Outlook 2010 all day events stick with the day, not with the time zone.  But meeting requests are different - they assume a midnight to midnight meeting in ET is 11 pm - 11pm in CT. 

Tks Diane,  I understand your comments with regard to a meeting.  But your comments on the All Day event is not my experience.  To clarify;  I am in Sydney Australia.  I start and all day event in my Office 2010 Calendar.  I check the "ALL DAY" box, and then invite a colleague in Perth, Australia (Perth is currently 3hrs behind Sydney) and send the invite.  In my Outlook calendar the All Day event looks OK.  But in my colleagues calendar (also Office 2010) it shows as an appointment from 9pm on one day thru to 9pm on the next day.  We are using Exchange - does that make a difference?

Tks once again for your help!

Hi Diane, I just did another test (just to be sure) with another colleague in Bueos Aires (BA).  I made an All Day event for 18 Feb.  I invited the colleague in BA.  He accepted the invite and it has gone into his calendar as an appointment from 10AM 17th Feb 2013 to 10AM 18th Feb 2013 - see screen dump from his computer.  BTW - It is looking fine in my computer.

Tks

Diane,  When you say "..but meeting requests are different....", are you saying that because I invite someone to my All Day event, they receive it as a 24hr meeting ad not as an All Day event?  Hence when the person I invited changes their time zone on their laptop, the meeting is then a 24hr meeting offset from midnight by the time difference between the old and the new time zone?

Tks Michael

Correct, its a 24 hour meeting, not an all day event, and it acts like a meeting - 1 pm  - 2 pm your time is 2 -3 one time zone over, 24 hours would be 1am - 1am one time

Tks Diane,  I think I have (finally) got it!  Do you think that this will be "fixed" in the future or is this the way it will stay?

Tks again

I don't expect changes because it's a meeting and meetings have the premise that you'll be meeting someone at an appointed time.

Appointments were changed so all day events stick to a day when viewed in shared calendars or public folder calendars. If you need to share an all day event with someone in another time zone, forward an appointment instead.

Understand and thanks for your help!

It's not just meetings.

We're using Office365, with Outlook 2010 and 2013. All day events that are not meetings, but are seen via calendar sharing, are getting messed up between users in different states (NSW has DST, Qld doesn't).

Appointments were changed so all day events stick to a day when viewed in shared calendars or public folder calendars. If you need to share an all day event with someone in another time zone, forward an appointment instead.

@Diane, very informative.  Unfortunately, my use case is to add an all day item to a SharePoint list, and forwarded appointments do not display, only "meeting".

Question - Is there a way to change the "Time Zone" of an all-day meeting? In other words, I am in Central Time, the SharePoint server is in Eastern Time.  I'd like my event to be a single -all-day event.  Does not appear that the time-zone selection is available for all day events.

When you click 'All Day', the time zones selections are removed.

Diane,

To workaround this issue, can we configure the All-day event in Outlook 2010 to be say 8am to 8pm ?

thanks

Yes, you can do that.

I think this response misses the point. All-day events simply don't work correctly, unless you work for a company that only exists in one time zone. The workaround to replace all-day events with calendar events that run from, say 08:00-18:00 is ignoring the problem, and really doesn't solve it.

For example: New Year's Day is an all day event. It lasts from midnight to midnight wherever you are in the world. Similarly, if I take the 14th of March off work, that should be the 14th of March, not some other span of time depending on where on the planet people happen to be.

Here's why the workaround doesn't work. If my company gives everybody a day off on Christmas Eve, using your workaround would result in somebody at HQ (GMT-8) sending a 10 hour event that will appear in my diary (GMT) as running from 16:00 on Christmas Eve through to 02:00 on Christmas day. That is (a) hardly representative of a day off on Christmas Eve while (b) still spanning 2 days in my diary.

A meeting that runs from 08:00 to 18:00 is one thing, while an all-day event (like my birthday) is something else entirely and runs from midnight to midnight wherever I happen to be on this Earth.

Charlie is 100% correct! This is a huge flaw in Outlook, and I am amazed that this does not make total sense to any Microsoft Product Managers. I am trying to "invite" my co-workers to my "All Day" event which is a vacation day of mine. That way they have it on their calendar that I am out that day. Since I am on MST and they are on EST it looks like I am out 2 days since it crosses over 2 days on their calendars. The "workaround" to have a meeting from say 6am-6pm is JUST THAT A WORKAROUND and as Charlie pointed out is flawed if you have major differences in time zones. This is an innate flaw in the application, and seems that it would be SUPER EASY to fix if Microsoft would just admit it is a flaw. If they don't want to make an all day event NOT adjust by default, then add an option when adding an all day event to NOT ADJUST.