Windows Mobile ruins another day

My next door neighbour David Jackson came over today to act as my personal tech support. After I had already spent 4 hours unsuccessfully trying to get Activesync on my Pocket PC talk to Activesync on my Tablet PC via bluetooth, he spent another two hours and finally got it working. The wonders of modern technology!!

Yes, I finally caved in and decided I needed Outlook Calendar to be working on all of my PCs until a suitable alternative is found. I was also sick of certain important documents not being available on my tablet.

So joy oh joy, I know have Activesync working and guess what? My Pocket PC has decided that daylight savings in Victoria has finished for the year. But oh no! Steve Bracks, our hair-do Premier, has extended it for another week thanks to the Uncommon-wealth Games. So... now the PDA thinks it is 8.34pm desite my telling it 20 times today that it is only 7.34pm and, what's even better, ALL OF MY APPOINTMENTS IN OUTLOOK ARE NOW AN HOUR OUT. My 9am appointment for tomorrow is scheduled to 10am. My 10am for 11am. FOR MY ENTIRE DIARY FOREVER INTO ETERNITY.

That appointment I have for July? Yep, it's wrong. The one for September? Yep it's wrong too. I would change them - but I don't even know they are there. I have to search through my whole goddamn calendar into eternity.

But wait - it gets even better. If I DON'T change all of those appointments, and figure everything will sort itself out in a week when DLS finally finishes? Then all of the appointments I enter into my calendar in the next week will ALSO be an hour out once the calendar changes.

Sometime I hate technology and think Merlin Mann and his hipster diary are probably right. I've wasted an entire day on this shit.

Comments

[Tony]

Had the same problem at work. Changed the time an hr forward and it soon reset itself. So what I did was change the time zone I live in to be Solomon Islands so its +11 hrs instead of +10 hrs. Worked fine for the rest of the day tho being on a business network I an unsure it will remain that way. Well it's only 1 week.

[Mike P]

there is a download form Microsoft to fix this - chekc out this
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=DDA845DE-9D70-487C-8F7C-093D4DFD1899&displaylang=en

[Cameron Reilly]

Thanks Mike but does that fix the Pocket PC timezone or just the desktop? Doesn't seem to have helped.

[leisa reichelt]

I've been battling with this today as well and have discovered a little 'fix'.
Assuming you've downloaded and installed the patch - if that still doesn't work, then you need to open up the date/time properties display and toggle off then back on the 'adjust for daylight savings' option.

voila. fixed.

I never know if its surprising or predictable that the old 'get out then get back in' approach rides again.

hope this helps :)

[Cameron Reilly]

hey leisa, where is that setting? I spent ages looking through my pda for it and couldn't find it!

[Mike P]

Hey Cam, can't be much more help with the Pocket PC side of things - not using one at the moment... I just came across this download in my travels and thought it might be useful...

[Leisa Reichelt]

hey Cam,

I haven't checked if there is actually one of those toggles on the PDA version, but I'd imagine there would be...

you go to Time/Date properties, then there's a tab called 'Time Zone' and the little daylight savings toggle is in there.

[Cameron Reilly]

Leisa, still can't find it. I don't have a Time/Date properties thing on my PDA. Maybe cuz I'm running the hacked version of WM2005? :-)

[leisa reichelt]

that could be it.

oh well. only a few days of pain left :)

[Stephen]

After this daylight savings nightmare ends and we can get Outlook back to normal with real and accurate clocks, go to the 'Folder List' part of Outlook and right click your calendar folder and use the 'Advanced Find' to grab your messages (use filters to eliminate holidays etc). It is ugly though you can work with the raw .msg e-mail type message format of the appointments in the calendar.

[Cameron Reilly]

Thanks Stephen but then what? Grab them and....?

[Monique]

Hey,

Have you tried downloading a special patch from Microsoft? It adds an additional timezone. Once installed, select the new timezone and your appointments should'nt be out by an hour....It works, I promise!

Good luck! I hope it all works out!

[Ian Bren]

Don't forget to back out the change as soon as you can - so you don't end up making appointments for next year in this "Uncommonwealth" timezone.

[Cameron Reilly]

I think I'll just back out of Outlook instead and find me a calendar which isn't going to frak with my timezones without asking permission!