Applies to
Microsoft Outlook® 2002

If you travel for meetings in places with different times zones or have to schedule meetings with attendees who are in different times zones, you may have experienced some confusion over how to use Outlook in these situations. This article attempts to eliminate that confusion and offers some best practice tips and workarounds for known issues in Outlook 2002.

Three factors affect the scheduling of a meeting in Outlook:

• The computer's clock setting (time).
• The computer's local time zone setting.
• The computer's daylight saving time adjustment setting.

All three factors must be set correctly on both the meeting organizer's computer and on each attendee's computer. Otherwise, Outlook cannot schedule the meeting time correctly.

About time zones

World time zones are based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), established at 0 degrees longitude in Greenwich, England. For example, Pacific Time, the time zone on the west coast of North America, is GMT-8:00. In other words, there's an eight hour time difference between Seattle and Greenwich.

Most world time zones require a time adjustment twice each year (usually the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October) to account for daylight saving time (DST) changes. This causes problems for time zone jurisdictions, such as Arizona, Hawaii, and Indiana in the United States, and Saskatchewan in Canada, that do not observe daylight saving time.
To solve this problem, Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) was developed as the international time standard. UTC is similar to GMT except that it observes no daylight saving time (DST) and is based on a 24-hour clock. Zero (0) hours UTC is midnight in GMT. The local 24-hour time convention is converted to UTC by adding or subtracting hours based on your location with respect to the prime meridian as well as local daylight saving time considerations.

Outlook Calendar items' start and end times are stored in terms of UTC.

Note  There is no difference in how appointments, meeting items, and all-day events are treated with respect to time zones.

For more technical information about UTC and world time zones, visit the following sites:

• Astronomical Time Keeping
• United States Naval Observatory: What is Universal Time?

To set the time zone

When you first install and run Outlook, Outlook uses the same current time zone and daylight saving time setting as the Microsoft Windows® operating system. You can change the current time zone and daylight saving time in Outlook as follows:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options.
3. Under Advanced Options, click Time Zone.
4. Choose a time zone from the drop-down list, and then click OK.

To adjust for daylight saving time, select the Adjust for daylight saving time check box.

Notes

• When you adjust time zones and the daylight saving time setting in Outlook you are also adjusting the same settings in Windows.
• Some time zones do not have DST. When Outlook is set to a non-DST time zone, such as Arizona, the Adjust for daylight saving time is unavailable.
• When Outlook is set to a time zone that has DST, the Adjust for daylight saving time is selected. You can clear the check box, although this is not recommended.

To display an additional time zone

You can have Outlook display a second time zone in your Calendar by selecting the Show an additional time zone check box in the Time Zone dialog box. The second time zone is used only to show a second time bar in Calendar view and does not affect the way Calendar items are stored or displayed.

Note  The additional time zone is not affected by the current time zone settings; it is completely separate.

What happens when you change time zones

When you change the current time zone, all Calendar views are updated to display the new time zone (this is most clearly seen if you have two time zones displayed in the Calendar and then change the current time zone). All Calendar items move to the new time zone. For example, if you move from the Pacific time zone to the Mountain time zone, all of your appointments will be displayed at one hour later.

All-day events also move to adjust for the change in time zone, and this results in the most noted time zone issue in Outlook — one-day events that appear to be longer than 24 hours. For example, the July 4th U.S. holiday spans from 12:00 A.M. July 4th until 1:00 A.M. July 5th when the time zone changes from Pacific to Mountain. For more details, see the "Common scenarios and workarounds" section below.

What happens when spanning time zones

If you are in one time zone and you send a meeting request to a user in a different time zone, the meeting item will be displayed at different local times on each person's calendar (but at the same absolute time in UTC).

For example, if a meeting organizer is in the Pacific time zone and sends out a meeting request that starts at 2:00 P.M. Pacific Time to an attendee in the Mountain time zone, the attendee will see that the meeting starts at 3:00 P.M. Mountain Time. In both cases the meeting is stored on the respective servers as starting at the same time in UTC (10:00 P.M.). For more details, see the "Common scenarios and workarounds" section below.

Common scenarios and workarounds

Meeting organizer is in a time zone with DST and the attendee's time zone does not have DST

Issue:   An instance of an attendee's recurring meeting moves by one hour on the calendar even though nothing has changed, and the attendee didn't receive a meeting update.

This happens when the meeting organizer is in a time zone with daylight saving time and the attendee is in a different time zone that does not have daylight saving time. After the change to or from daylight saving time in the organizer's time zone, the meeting moves by one hour relative to UTC (to keep the meeting at a constant time for the organizer before and after the change), and consequently the attendee's meeting moves by one hour in the local time. This is by design. The meeting organizer's time zone controls the UTC of the meetings, and all people in other time zones will see the meetings at the same UTC (different local time).

If managers have a delegate, in order to have the meetings be displayed correctly, the managers may need to organize (i.e., create and send the meeting request) themselves. For example, a delegate in the head office in New York manages the calendars for four regional vice presidents, one of whom has an office in Phoenix, Arizona. The delegate books a monthly status teleconference for Tuesdays at 2:00 P.M. (Phoenix time) for this vice president (VP). After the change to or from daylight saving time in New York, the meeting in Phoenix will move forward or backward by one hour because the delegate's time zone is considered the meeting organizer's time zone. If the Phoenix VP wants the meeting to always occur at the same time, then the Phoenix VP and not the delegate should create the meeting.

Workaround:   The person for whom the meeting should not move should be the one who organizes the meeting.

Traveling through several time zones

Issue:   You are traveling through two or more time zones and need the Calendar to display the local time for each appointment. For example, imagine you are a salesperson in New York who has a breakfast meeting at 8:00 A.M., then flies to Chicago for a 1:00 P.M. meeting, and then flies to Las Vegas and has a dinner reservation at 6:00 P.M. Outlook displays all these appointments relative to the time zone you were in when inputting the Calendar entries. This means that in New York when you look at the Calendar, breakfast is at 8:00 A.M., the Chicago meeting is at 1:00 P.M., and the Las Vegas dinner is at 6:00 P.M., but when you look at the Calendar in Chicago, the breakfast is at 9:00 A.M., the local (Chicago) meeting is at 2:00 P.M., and the dinner is at 7:00 P.M.

Workaround:   The user should not change their original time zone and should use the additional time zone feature to display the local time. Unfortunately, you can only display one additional time zone, so you may need to change the second time zone each time you change time zones.

Recurring meetings and appointments

When you create an appointment or meeting with recurrences, Outlook creates a single item that has a start and end time in UTC. Outlook then changes that single item into a series. The series has single start and end times that apply to every instance of the series that isn't an exception. When a series is expanded for display in your Calendar, each instance has the same start and end time in UTC.

If you change time zones, all instances, including exceptions, move to reflect the new time zone. Exceptions to a series are still identified as part of the series for most actions; however, each exception has its own start and end times.

If the series crosses a DST change, the instances of the series continue to be displayed at the same time but are one hour ahead or back relative to UTC.

Issue:   Recurring meetings that include Sunday at 2:00 A.M. and span more than one time zone will be displayed incorrectly on the day of the daylight saving change.

For example, the meeting might be from midnight to 8:00 A.M. and therefore include 2:00 A.M. Outlook does not change the Calendar view to display two instances of 2 A.M. or to skip 2 A.M., so all meetings that span 2:00 A.M. will be one hour too long or too short depending on the direction of the change. Also, if a meeting spans two or more time zones and one of those time zones changes to daylight saving time before midnight of the subsequent time zones, it is displayed incorrectly on the attendee's calendars because the display is set at 12:00 A.M. when only one time zone has changed.

Workaround:   Ideally you should avoid scheduling meetings for early Sunday mornings! This problem fixes itself at midnight of the next day (Monday), except if the recurrence starts exactly at 2:00 A.M. or you have a reminder set for 2:00 A.M. In this case you should switch your computer to the organizer's time zone, delete the single instance that spans the DST change, and then switch back to your own time zone.

All-day events

Issue:   When you have all-day events on your Calendar and then change the time zone, the all-day events span two days instead of one.

Outlook treats anniversaries, holidays, and birthdays as all-day events (an all-day event is defined from midnight to midnight in the local time zone). When time zones change, all-day events move; therefore when you change the computer's time zone the all-day event moves to display in the new time zone. An event like a holiday or birthday will appear in the Calendar on two consecutive days. For example, a birthday could appear from 6 A.M. one day to 6 A.M. the next day.

Workaround: You can do one of the following:

• Use the additional time zone feature in Outlook to display the local time zone and do not change the operating system time zone.
• Correct each all-day event for the current time zone setting. (See the Knowledge Base article mentioned below.)
• Change the time zone back to the one used when the items were created. (See the Knowledge Base article mentioned below.)

Time zones, such as Katmandu, with offsets less than 30 minutes

Issue:   Some time zones use a 15-minute offset instead of a 30-minute offset, and this causes display problems because Outlook can only display Calendar items in 30-minute time blocks.

The time side bar in Calendar view can only display offsets in 30-minute time blocks. Therefore, when time zones that use a 15 minute offset, such as Katmandu (GMT+5:45), are displayed, Calendar items appear incorrectly.

Workaround:   If you are in this type of time zone, you should rely on the meeting information and not pay attention to the time side bar in the Calendar view.

Counter-proposing a recurring meeting occurrence

Issue: Organizer is unable to accept a counter proposal from an attendee in a different time zone for one occurrence of a recurring meeting.

Outlook does not store the time zone property on recurrence exceptions and the counter-propose message sent by the attendee who is in a different time zone is not recognized by the organizer's client. When the meeting organizer opens the counter-propose message and clicks Accept Proposal or View All Proposals, the following message appears:

This meeting is not in the Calendar; it may have been moved or deleted. Because this meeting cannot be found, the proposal cannot be accepted.

This issue does not reproduce for single meetings or for the recurrence series; it is only single instances of a recurrence that are affected.

Workaround: The organizer needs to accept the counter proposal by updating the meeting's time manually. Open the meeting occurrence that the attendee has counter proposed and change the time, then send the update. This issue may also occur if Outlook is not set to adjust for daylight saving time.

You need appointments to be at fixed times no matter what time zone you are in

Issue: You want an appointment to show on the Calendar at a fixed time no matter what the time zone is. However, when you change time zones, the appointment changes to reflect the new time zone.

An example of this might be if you want to be reminded to take your medication at the same absolute time regardless of the time zone you are in.

Workaround: Outlook can't force an appointment to remain fixed when the time zone changes. If you need the appointment to stay at a fixed time, you shouldn't change your current time zone. You can add the additional time zone to keep track of the non-primary time zone times. To change the time zone setting in Outlook without changing the times for each of your appointments, you must export the data from your Calendar folder, change the time zone setting, and then import the data back into Outlook.

Conclusion

Time zone handling in Outlook follows standard convention where possible. Of course, one person's "standard convention" may not be another person's and that is one of the challenges of designing a scheduling product used around the world.