How do I keep appointment times at local time?

Question

Level 1

9 points

How do I keep appointment times at local time?

I would really appreciate it if someone can help. I want all my appointment and flight times to show a local times. For example, while in Europe (CET) I phoned home to London and made an appointment. I put this in the iPhone as the time it will be in London when I meet that client. I think this is reasonable. Upon my return to London and changed the time zone in the phone, the iPhone then shifted it by an hour. I have been getting around this problem for years when traveling with my MacBook Pro by not changing the time zone in the Preferences. I cannot do that with the iPhone - I use it as an alarm clock.

What I am wanting to do is to put all times in as local, and not have the phone change them. I am leaving at the end of the month for Australia and New Zealand, and if the phone changes things they will actually move to another day. I currently have time zone support turned off. I need to change the time zone (or at least the time) in the iPhone.

Can anybody tell me how I can ensure that neither iCal nor the iPhone change the times of my flights and appointments when I change time zones?

James

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1), iPhone 3G

Posted on Sep 20, 2008 2:16 AM

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Answer 1

roaminggnome

Level 10

106,407 points

Sep 30, 2008 11:54 AM in response to Guildoon

Page 76 iphone users guide:

"Set iPhone to adjust event times for a selected time zone:
1 In Settings, choose General > Date & Time.
2 Turn Time Zone Support on.
3 Tap Time Zone and search for a major city in the time zone you want.
When Time Zone Support is on, Calendar displays event dates and times in the time
zone of the city you selected. When Time Zone Support is off, Calendar displays events
in the time zone of your current location as determined by the network time. "

http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/iPhone_UserGuide.pdf

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Answer 2

Sep 30, 2008 12:14 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Calendars > Time Zone Support.

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Answer 3

AjayP

Level 1

0 points

Sep 30, 2008 10:11 AM in response to Guildoon

As far as I can tell, iPhone does not let you select the time zone of an appointment. It automatically allocated the time zone that you have set for your the phone.

The workaround I have found is to use iCal (on my Powerbook) to change the time zone subsequently. iCal allows you to choose a separate time zone for each appointment, and iPhone then picks up the correct time zone while syncing.

This is obviously the result of some pretty poor design work by Apple.

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Answer 4

Sep 30, 2008 12:07 PM in response to roaminggnome

When I go to Settings/General/Date & Time all I see is "Set Time Automatically", which is On. If I turn it Off I still don't get an option to turn Time Zone on and off. All I see is "Time Zone" and "Set Date & time". If I change the Time Zone it does NOT show events at the time in that time zone.

The manual is not describing how the phone actually works. Maybe you are looking at an older manual, and that "feature" has been removed in v 2.1?

The iPhone calendar is so primitive it is useless to anyone who travels or even has a busy schedule. That is why I still carry a Palm T|X with Pimlico Software's DateBk6 calendar app and use IT for my calendar. I've asked Pimlico and they say that they would like to release a calendar for the iPhone, but cannot because Apple doesn't allow applications to access or update the calendar.

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Answer 5

Sep 30, 2008 12:20 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Thanks, Allan; that works. But it's still a primitive calendar app 😉

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