gagood

Several times a year I travel to other time zones in the country and need to change the time zone on my PPC to match where I am. However, when I change time zones all of my appointments shift. So, if I enter an appointment in my PPC while I'm at my office in California and then change the time zone when I get to Chicago, all of my appointments are now set two hours later.

When I'm setting an 8am appointment I'll have in Chicago while I'm still in California, I want to be able to enter it at 8am and not have to compensate for time zones and enter it as 6am. This worked fine when I had a Palm, but I can't figure out how to make it work on my PPC. Any ideas?

MKREdit

I know exactly what you are talking about it is the one thing that bothers me on the ppc. The only way I have found to get around this is to manually change the home time. That means if you are on EST and need to change to PST incrimenting the hour back 3 hours without changing the time zone. I also had a palm and a program called Traveltracker which would automatically change the time zone you were in when you reached your destination. the travel programs for ppc don't seem to have that functionality So I can only assume that its a big deal to do on the ppc

deskdata

Is this such a big problem? The Clock function lets you setup Home & Visiting time zones. If you regularly visit, say Germany, then setup the Visiting time zone to "Berlin,Rome". Then when you want to enter details of a meeting in Germany, use the Clock function to switch to the Visiting timezone, add the appointment then use the Clock function to change back to the Home timezone. Simple.

MKREdit

You would think that it would be that simple but it's not. lets say you have a 12:00pm appointment in vegas and you are in NY. You set your time to the visiting city set your appointment to 12:00pm (here's where it goes bad) When you set your time back to home time it changes the 12:00pm appointment to 3:00pm. Although it works when you are in that time zone when you are reviewing your scheduel at home you are looking at times offset by 3 hours. And I havent even gone into what goes on in Outlook

gagood

I recently went to Chicago for a trade show. Prior to the show, I made a number of appointments and entered them in Outlook on my PC. Additionally, I entered my flight schedules. When I got to Chicago from California I changed the time zone on my Axim. I wanted to make sure I had the correct time so I didn't miss any appointments. But, then all my appointments shifted two hours and I had to change the time for everyone of them. The only way I can see that you can avoid this is to enter appointments into Outlook for the time it is in my current time zone -- what a pain!

deskdata

Yes, I realise that, but you are viewing your appointments according to your current timezone. As things stand, the PPC doesn't know which timezones apply to which appointments so it simply expresses all times relative to the current timezone. The only way to do what you want would be to add a timezone field to each appointment record. The software would then need to be amended to take account of timezones to display all times in local time.
Maybe someone should suggest it to Microsoft for inclusion in a future release of the OS?

gagood

Or, the better thing would be if the software didn't move any appointments when you change time zones. I can't think of a case when you would want the appointments to move.

PPCFever

Hmmm... this is an interesting thread. I sync my Axim with my work Outlook (Office 2003) and my "home" time zone is US - central. Whenever I travel, I always change my PDA clock to "visiting" and enter the time zone I am traveling to (and my work PC). When I return home, I change my clock settings back to "home". I think the key here is I change the time zone, not the time as the time gets changed automatically with the time zone change. I work for a global company and get meeting notices originating from multiple time zones and I create meeting notices both at home and when I travel.

I have never had a problem with my Axim in not having the correct time for my meetings, wherever I am at. I have noticed, however, a few applications such as tAgenda, that do not seem to use the correct time as converted for the time zone that I'm in. I think the key is making sure you have your clock set to the correct home and visiting time zones. When you sync with a PC, you need to have BOTH set correctly.

I'm not sure if this helps, but it works for me.

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MKREdit

It's just easier to adjust the time zone as I have previously stated for now. Microsoft wouldnt have to add another field to each appointment all they would have to do is in the dialog that comes up when you change timezones add an option not to adjust apointment times. The way it is now if you come back from a trip and fail to set you PPC back to home time and you sync it will screw up all of your appointments in outlook not just the trip. Sure all it takes to get it back to normal is set the time back to home but depending on what you have in your appointments it can take some time. The travel tracking program I currently have will enter your trips with an offset time but you will have to deal with the wrong times in outlook.

gagood

You're right; the easiest way is to forget about changing time zones and just change the time. It's just a shame because the main reason for changing time zones is to make it simple to change the time. There's absolutely no reason I can think of for shifting appointment times. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this in their next release.

iflysims

Just found this tread (of course after I posted my question) anyway. I agree there is no reason to change the appointments no matter what time zone I am in... All I have been able to do is change the time (rather then using visiting time feature). Just tought there is a better way...

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flyingwil

found the answer, PI Correct Time, it seems to do the trick OR Pocket Informant. I too have this problem since I work for an airline and change time zones daily.

Don't Panic!

Here's an interesting tutorial on the subject found at ppcw.net.

HTH

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