Exchange Birthday Shifted by 1 day

ibaj,

I sent you the requested diagnostic itunes files. Let me know if you got them.

I have had this problem with Windows Mobile in the past - back when DST changed and MS patched the WinMo devices. I was only syncing with Outlook then - I ran the cleanup tool to no avail.

My final solution was to go in and reset the Birthdays in Outlook.

I agree it is a TimeZone issue, and somehow it affects full day apts like Birthdays. I guess that internally the calendar stores these as 12AM- 12AM apts. so a change by one hour could screw up the day they fall on.

Just adding my 2 cents that I don't think it is only iPhone, it is other mobile devices too. But it doesn't affect all B-days.... very frustrating, but eventually someone will figure it out.

No, it is only with the iPhone! I sync the same datas the same way over the air with my HTC Touch and there is everything okay! No wrong birthdays!

Actually, it is a time zone issue. I was able to reproduce this only AFTER I installed Microsoft's "August 2008 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows operating systems"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951072

They changed the way they interpreted time zones in records. You can see this clearly using a tool like MAPIViewer to see your Outlook PST. Before the update, new entries were offset by the time zone, without the Daylight Savings Time being adjusted. After the update, the entries now include the offset, something Apple couldn't have known about.

Why a Windows Device might not have the problem is most likely (and this is speculation) due to the fact that it probably received a similar update.

I bought my HTC Touch in Mai 2007 and didn't updated it since then and I've had never a problem with the birthdays!

romolt,

Unless you have disabled it, most Windows Mobile devices do over the air updates for their apps automatically. The Mobile Office app on your device very well could have updated.

Similar to iPhone App Store updates, but without your getting prompted for options.

There are two known causes for this then at this time:

1 - Exchange Servers and/or Outlook not current on DST updates. (prior to the August 2008 update)
2 - Exchange Servers and/or Outlook that have the August 2008 update applied

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.

Dear Nathan,
sorry but there is NO automatic update function on my HTC! And there are no manual updates from Microsoft available for my HTC, I looked up very often on the page from MS and HTC! And there was NEVER a problem with the birthdays, not last year and not this year.

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Nathan C.

Although the feature is there, I have never had a WinMo device do OTA updates. The closest thing is going to the Windows Update site using the mobile browser and downloading a patch.

Some might do it, but none of my VZW WinMo phones ever did.

If you read my post i didn't say it was 100% consistent. Maybe your WinMo devices doesn't do it, but other people's does.

There is some kind of bug when syncing birthdays that is somehow Timezone and DST related. If anyone knew all the conditions, then it would have been fixed by now as it has plagued WinMo for almost 1.5 years.

And Nathan, you saw that the same person has a correct birthday on the HTC Touch and a wrong on the iPhone! And I sync both over the air with the same Exchange-Account. So why everthing is correct on the HTC Touch and not on the iPhone? So when will Apple fix it!?

<Edited by Moderator>

Ibaj and Nathan,

Without getting into a fight here,the fact is that a few of us are having major problems with this. Till now you guys kept saying that you could not reproduce the problem and that we all had wrong time zone settings.

I tried to do my part by filling out the feedback form and sending the itunes diagnostics that ibaj requested (did you get it?). Now I really don't care if it is due to MS or Apple. What I do care is now that Ibaj was able to reproduce the problem (and the rest of don't seem so crazy after all) can you guys figure out a fix for it.

I would love to have my calendar back in sync and the iphone contacts to show the corect birthdays. Heck I almost wish the iphone came with its own desktop program like the Palms did. Its not like I love outlook but as a PC user thats the only option Apple gave me. If I knew they wouldn't play nice together I would have given the iPhone purchase some more thought.

BTW is the fix gonna be more of a an iTunes patch/update or will it have to be in the iPhone OS.

One more thing Ibaj said something to the effect of how should have Apple known MS changed the whole timezone handling. Well I do not accept that as an excuse. Apple and its iPhone documentation says it supports Outlook for PC users. Well that waas a choice Apple made, therefore they should be upto speed with outlook and MS software. Like I said before if they offered a PC PIM as an alternative with the iPhone I would have installed it.

Thank you

Hear her.

Please fix this... everyone around me has this problem... this is really really painful...

And Nathan, one point I can't understand! The birthday in the contact shouldn't be connected to Timezone or something like that. The day of birth of a person is something fixed! It's the same like his or her phonenumber! The event in the calender must be connected to Timezone etc, but nut the field in the contact! Why Apple connected this field with Timezone!? The birthday didn't chance, it is always the same! My birthday ist always the same 27 of may, independent where I am! So Apple, please fix this! I told this problem to Apple months ago, why nothing happend!?

Outlook saves your birthday as an all-day event in it's MAPI store (the big file that it keeps everything in) as something like April 1, 1977 7:00am

7:00am? Why then? Well, it just so happens that you live in the Pacific time zone and your birthday falls during daylight savings (+ 1 hour) so 7:00am is when your birthday begins and lasts 24 hours.

I know it doesn't seem like it makes sense, but it's how the date is stored in Outlook.

But ibaj, on the Apple homepage I can read: "With iPhone 2.0 software, iPhone does even more for your enterprise. It supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, delivering push email, calendar, and contacts." and "When you sync your iPhone with your computer, the events you’ve created on the go sync back to Microsoft Outlook on a PC,..."
But at the moment it didn't work a 100 %! So when Apple nows how everything works in Outlook and so on, why Apple did't fix the bug???
Pls. fix it Apple!!! Give us a new update for our phone, because it must be for the phone and no new itunes, because it must help also for me, and I sync all aver the air, so pls. Apple, fix it!!!