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Helpful answers
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Dec 9, 2014 12:11 PM in response to Gator5000eby Gator5000e,BTW, does anyone know if this happens if you use a third party Google calendar app on your phone? I see an app like CalenMob and was wondering if anyone has tried anything like it or another program that is supposed to sync directly with Google.I may give it a try.I will report back if I do.
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Dec 9, 2014 3:26 PM in response to Gator5000eby Gator5000e,I just stumbled across this program that syncs Outlook to iOS devices. It looks like the solution I need to avoid Google Calender. It does not create a separate calendar like iCloud does. It also has a free 7 days trial. Anyway, here is the like to the program AkrutoSync - http://www.akruto.com/
I will give the trial a free shot. Avoiding Google Calendar may cut out the GMT issue altogether.
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Dec 9, 2014 4:26 PM in response to JG in SBby FrankCPNYC,JG I can tell you that your work on this bug has helped tremendously. In our case, the Exec is rarely in the office, but we manage the Exchange 2010 server housed onsite. The Exec does travel, but always prefers everything on Calendar to reflect EST (all appointments and meetings). Exec creates invites on an iPad and invites others (sometimes within organization and sometimes outside organization). Appointments are accurate in that they have correct EST time zones. And we can see the raw data on Exchange that appointments are accurate In EST.
Exec's iPhone however will show two sets of appointment times (EST times and sometimes Pacific, other times GMT). We are still not sure if Exec is modifying these appointments or just opening them up on iPhone. But for sure the iPhone often overwrites the Time Zone stamp on appointment and propagates everywhere else, marking it now as Pacific in exchange and other mail systems like Gmail.
If I go to Outlook on an invitee calendar (invitee being in our same organization), Outlook is intuitive enough to place correct start and end time in the day, week or month views. But if you open the appointment itself we now see time zone has changed to Pacific. The strange part about this: the organizer's Outlook calendar completely shows Pacific in both the day/week/month views and inside the appointment itself.
if we ask the user to open the appointment on the iPhone, it is now typically 3 hours earlier start/end, and time zone is Cupertino. But we've also seen the GMT times as second TZ designation as well (in the Phone)
Our Exec is physically on east coast, creating EST invites. IPad is fine. Seems the iPhone is really screwing with the time zone stamp. We tried to advise user to set 'time zone override' off, try that, and then turn override on, try again, makes no difference in either setting.
The problem as it often gets caught up in the 'blame game' of Apple-Microsoft. But like you we did our due diligence and can see the server being updated and changed by the IOS device, not the other way around. And your uncovering this Apple bug here, was closest we saw of same type of issue: multiple Apple devices and inconsistencies between the two Apple devices.
Also seems that any errors can be manually fixed later, by using Outlook/Exchange to fix and propagate changes back to all Apple devices.
With certainty user has IOS 8 on both devices. But whether it's 8 or 8.1 not sure yet as we asked for info on that.
A question to the group: is this bug replicable if one would, let's say, unbox a new iPad and iPhone and start fresh with same account on both? Or is it affecting users with two Apple devices seemingly at random? Because I would think if it's a constant bug with IOS 8, and users that have both an iPad and an iPhone, then anyone would be able to replicate these issues.
With 30k plus views on this thread, I can see enough users are probably experiencing this and consensus is that it must be fixed by Apple. But shouldn't it be affecting many more users who have multiple devices? I have both an iPad and iPhone with IOS 8 and will do some more testing. I think what I'm suggesting: if we replace affected iPhone with new iPhone 6 running 8.1 would problem go away? Many on this thread have gone to Genius bar and are still frustrated, and some have done full wipes & resets to no avail, but have any had Apple replace whole device?
Maybe we recommend leaving Calendar on just the one working Apple device, and remove it from the other, would this be an effective way to solve this (until Apple fixes it)? Then advise to try re-adding Calendar on second device at a later date? In other words: is having two devices the root of this issue and removing one device from mix a viable option? I realize not everyone has means to do something like simply replace an iPhone.
Thanks all and welcome any input. I can tell you this is driving everyone bananas here.
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Dec 9, 2014 4:50 PM in response to FrankCPNYCby JG in SB,@FrankCPNYC: I can sort of answer this question: "is this bug replicable if one would, let's say, unbox a new iPad and iPhone and start fresh with same account on both?" As part of my troubleshooting, I had Apple completely erase both of my iDevices and restore a factory image of iOS 8.1 onto both. I did this before syncing either of them with Exchange. I then set them both back up and the bug was present. It's baked in to iOS.
Also, an extremely helpful Genius at my local store was willing to lend me his brand new iPhone 6 Plus to troubleshoot with. It was not "right out of the box" but it was new and certainly had never been synced to an Exchange server, much less MY exchange server. The bug replicated on the brand new iPhone 6 Plus just like on my other devices.
The way this bug manifests in my setup is something you would not experience it if you were only using one (1) iDevice. It appears when you use a minimum of 2 iDevices, and propagates to as many iDevices as you might have. So, when you set up an appointment on the first devices (we'll call it the "originator") it looks fine, and also seems to STAY correct as to time zone. When it propagates over to another iDevice (the "receiver") the same appointment will now show transposed to GMT. If you modify or edit it in any way on the receiver, it then propagates back transposed to all other iDevices.
You confirmed something we were trying to determine: that iOS devices are modifying data on Exchange and not the other way around. This makes me 100% certain that the following is going on:
- iOS 8 puts some sort of GMT data tag on your calendar appointment when you create it on the originator iDevice. The tag does not alter the display of the appointment on the originator device.
- The data tag resides with the appointment, but doesn't get read or displayed any way by Exchange which is why you don't see it on your desktop
- The data tag DOES get read and displayed by other iDevices which is why you see it when it syncs over to them.
- Time zone transposition occurs only on the receiver device when it reads the data tag imprinted into the appointment by the originator.
The above explains why an appointment created directly in Outlook on your Desktop doesn't get transposed to GMT on any of the multiple devices synced to the same account, but shows up 100% of the time when a receiver iOS device syncs an appointment created on an iOS originator device. It also explains why an appointment created on your server will sync without transposition to any iDevice, but once modified on that device, syncs to a transposed time on your other iOS devices. Transposition occurs on the receiver device when the appointment is first downloaded to it.
I hope this is helpful, and also that you 1) have an open support case with Apple; and 2) that you have used the "tip" links I provided above to inform some online news outlets about this. It's a HUGE bug affecting thousands of users, particularly corporate users, and Apple needs to fix it.
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Dec 9, 2014 4:58 PM in response to JG in SBby Nothappyapple,I just down loaded a month's worth of calendar events to test of the new iOS will allow me to sync across all my devices and now the stupid thing put everything in the default calendar with no option to choose one or even create a new one, Steve Jobs would be turning in his grave if he new how poorly apple was doing things these days.
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Dec 9, 2014 6:14 PM in response to HofstraJetby doferty,Yep... Removed the GMail account, made sure Time Zone Override was off, and recreated the account. Good to go.
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Dec 9, 2014 6:40 PM in response to JG in SBby FrankCPNYC,JG to take your testing a little further...I'd be curious to see what would occur: with using a different account altogether to your Exchange server, if it's possible (see if your admin can provide a temporary one, or if you can create one). Different account added to both devices and under same conditions, would you see same GMT bug. Another thing I noticed is that IOS devices have another Time Zone setting in Privacy>Location Services>System Services (towards bottom)>Setting Time Zone (there's a Calendar one here as well). Wondering if bug has anything to do with Calendar not being able to lock onto location services.
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Dec 9, 2014 6:52 PM in response to FrankCPNYCby JG in SB,@FrankCPNYC: I don't think this is related to location services. The reason I think it's unrelated is because I have experimented with setting my devices to fixed time zones (under Settings>General>Date & Time) and toggling 'Set Automatically" to off. So I am basically hard-setting my time zones to Pacific Time (device only cares about one time zone and doesn't even look for others) and even after that this bug still shows up.
I will ask my admin about provisioning a totally virgin account on one of their Exchange servers and then wiping two iDevices to test this out with. I bet $$$ that the exact same thing is going to show up. And I think this is because at this point, it really looks like it's the receiving iDevice that is doing the time transposition based upon data that is implanted in the appointment by the originating iDevice. That explains the behavior I have seen, and also explains why users of Google calendar etc. are also experiencing the same thing (i.e. no Exchange exists in their environment). Still, worth testing if only to help convince Apple that the only explanation is that the source of this problem is iOS. If I can get my admin to try this, I'll report the results back.
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Dec 9, 2014 8:47 PM in response to JG in SBby Ghupka,Well, something is very sideways here because I hadn't experienced this problem at all until a couple of days ago, when it suddenly manifested - with me making absolutely no changes in software or settings. How does that make any sense?
I use Google Calendar, and when I add appointments on my iPhone or iPad, they are GMT on those devices, but not on the master calendar. Which makes me hopeful that someday if apple fixes this everything will go back to normal.... Yeesh....
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Dec 9, 2014 9:57 PM in response to Ghupkaby summarization,I am having the same problem. Whenever I create an event on my Gmail calendar using my iPhone or iPad, iOS adds GMT to everything. Events that are created on Gmail using my PC do not have this issue. It is only when I create events on an iDevice.
I suspect this is Google trying to stick it to Apple. I wish I were joking. Google does things like this on purpose to get people to buy Androids.
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Dec 9, 2014 10:01 PM in response to summarizationby JG in SB,Nope summarization....this bug is 100% pure Apple goodness. I have the exact same symptoms that you have and I do not own or use a single Android device, nor do I use any Google online services for anything. Read through some of the above posts and you will see this has been thoroughly tested and evaluated, and proven to be 100% a bug baked in to iOS 8. Apple generated it and Apple needs to fix it.
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Dec 9, 2014 10:04 PM in response to JG in SBby summarization,While I agree with you that it is not just Gmail, why would it start appearing all of a sudden? I didn't change any settings, and I had it on both iOS 8.1.1 and now 8.1.2.
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Dec 9, 2014 10:25 PM in response to summarizationby JG in SB,Have you read through the preceding 100+ replies to this thread? Including highly detailed replies from people who are in IT departments who have extensively done testing to isolate this bug? Replies from people who are able to review raw data on the subscribed server calendars and have confirmed that the erroneous time zone info is being appended to appointments by iOS devices and not by the servers they are using?
Consider the following (all documented above in this thread):
- If the subscribed calendar service is unchanged, and iOS 7.x devices sync to it...no bug. But if an iOS 8 device syncs to the very same appointment(s) on the very same subscribed calendar....BUG.
- Appointments created on the server by non iOS devices (like your desktop computer) don't transpose to GMT. Yet any appointment created on an iOS 8.x device transposes to GMT on other iOS devices.
- The time zone transposition occurs on everyone's iOS devices regardless of what service they are using as a subscribed calendar (Google, Exchange etc.) Are the subscribed calendars all the same? No. Is the mobile device operating system the same? Yes.
- For most people, this bug began to show up immediately after updating to iOS 8.x when no other variables in their setup changed.
- Apple engineering tech support has acknowledged, in writing to my MS Exchange host, that this is a bug unique to iOS 8.x.
So exactly what leads you to believe this is not "proven" to be generated by iOS 8.x? And if you strongly believe it isn't, all of us who are working to try to get Apple to fix this would really appreciate a detailed explanation of what you think actually does generate it (other than iOS). Any information that helps to isolate and resolve this is greatly appreciated regardless of what the cause ultimately turns out to be.
As for why it would suddenly show up on your setup when you claim to have not changed anything? I can't explain that. But there are numerous cases where this bug showed up immediately after users updated to iOS 8. The same users never experienced it on the same devices, with the same subscribed calendars, with the same settings, prior to the iOS 8 update. This sort of indicates it is related to iOS 8 don't you think?
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Dec 9, 2014 10:41 PM in response to JG in SBby Ghupka,I agree that it's likely something to do with iOS, but it's also not as simple as "it happens on the upgrade" I've been on iOS8.1 for months and the problem just started on my phone, and iPad, today. I upgraded my phone to 8.1.2 to see if that would help, but no luck... I changed no phone settings, I didn't change time zones, I didn't change calendars, but it just suddenly started happening.