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User profile for user: s5
s5 Author
User level: Level 1
7 points

Floating time zone support?

iCal has a handy feature where you can set the time zone of an event to "Floating". What this means is that the event is no longer tied to a specific time zone. So, let's say you want to schedule lunch at 12pm every day no matter where in the world you are, you set the time zone to floating, and that way you don't get an alert to have lunch at 4am if you're visiting another country.

The problem is that the iPhone doesn't seem to honor floating time zones. I'm current in San Francisco (US/Pacific), and I've planned various events, including travel times, in different countries for a trip I'm going on this summer.

When I view my calendar in iCal, I can see all the events at the local time they take place by setting their time zones to floating. But when I sync the events to my iPhone and change the phone's time zone, the times of the events are all several hours off. The events are all synced as if they were originally in US/Pacific.

Has anyone been able to get floating time zones to work correctly? The only solution I've been able to come up with is to set all the events to their correct time zones, but that means I have to change my calendar's time zone before I can make sense of what I'm supposed to do the next day after I arrive at my next stop on the trip.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.10), 2x3Ghz dual core

Posted on Aug 11, 2007 10:40 PM

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6 replies
User profile for user: ChkRazr
ChkRazr
User level: Level 1
7 points

Aug 25, 2007 4:46 AM in response to s5

Your post seems reasonably relevant to the reason I logged-on to this discussion forum this morning; perhaps your experience can answer my question. My iPhone and I are traveling from Omaha, NE, to Honolulu, HI, in a couple of weeks, where I've got a several meetings/dinners already scheduled in iCal. Unlike you, however, they are not "floating" appointments; instead, I went to the trouble of using iCal's "Time Zone" support to schedule such events as per their local time in Honolulu. I gather from what you're telling me, then, that the iPhone will NOT recognize that it's in a different time zone when I get off the plane in Hawaii and that all my Hawaiian-appointments will be incorrectly set to Omaha-time; is that right? Whatayathink?
--
TKG
Omaha
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User profile for user: Nathan C
Nathan C
User level: Level 5
6,266 points

Aug 25, 2007 7:43 AM in response to ChkRazr

ChkRazr,

If you specified the time zone creating the event, the times they display in the Calendar application will adjust based on the location of the iPhone. In some cases you may need to adjust the location setting.

The original poster in this thread is asking about turning off that option. He doesn't want the events to change based on the location.

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.
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User profile for user: John Reed4
John Reed4
User level: Level 1
25 points

Aug 25, 2007 10:19 AM in response to Nathan C

I was unaware of this feature, and recently programmed flight schedules for a trip to Utah, one hour ad vanced from my California timezone. So I entered the return flight time for 2:35PM into iCal, synced the iPhone, and went on my merry way. Came the day of the return, I got up, looked at my iPhone calendar, which said 3:35PM, and thought "Well, I'll just have a nice leisurely time getting to the airport (after my morning activities) Luckily, I got to the airport quite a bit earlier than 3:35, JUST AS THE AIRPLANE WAS LOADING! So I made it, but dodged a bullet. Would the "floating time zone" thing fix this issue?

Another niggling flaw showed up in that event I programmed for my home zone got bumped forward an hour by iPhone's calendar software, and didn't return to home after I returned. How do I combat THAT malady?
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User profile for user: mycre
mycre
User level: Level 1
4 points

Aug 25, 2007 2:40 PM in response to s5

I'm not using or syncing with any calendar application and keep all scheduling on the iPhone. I recently completed a trip to all four USA time zones, and found it really cool that the iPhone automatically changed to the local time. This means that all of my appointments, originally entered at their local time, were correct. The iPhone alerted me before each meeting exactly as I had requested. Awesome.
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User profile for user: Laura1968
Laura1968
User level: Level 1
8 points

Sep 19, 2007 5:15 PM in response to s5

I've had same problems as many. I want all my appointments to stay put when I put them in .MAC and all my floating events get put in .MAC they then become fixed in the time zone of my computer. Which means that although I want a concert in Paris at 8pm on the 30th of September to show up at 8pm on that day, it shows up at the local time of the viewer. Since my viewers may be coming from all over the world to see a concert and may not be aware that the time shown is THEIR local time, it is very confusing for all. So I've abandoned using a shared .MAC calendar or even Google calendar, for that matter, to share information. It's very frustrating, as I don't see why things have to be made so difficult. It renders everything much more difficult for those of us who travel a lot of different places, and want to share appointments in ANOTHER city with someone who is in even another time zone. Why can't they just simplify it??? I've been asking for this for over a year. Debating getting rid of my .MAC subscription because of it.
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Floating time zone support?

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