I am upgrading from Win XP and Office 2007 to Win 10 and Office 2016. I am also upgrading from a calendar in a case management application (Time Matters) to the Outlook calendar.
I just returned from a vacation on the east coast to my home on the west coast. Before leaving, I had entered a number of appointments in the Outlook calendar. The system clock was set to pacific time (PT). While on the east coast, I entered a number of appointments that would take place there. I didn't notice, but apparently the system clock changed to eastern time (ET). While on the east coast, I also entered a few appointments for when I returned.
When I got home, I noticed that all of the appointments I made while on the east coast were now off by 3 hours. I checked the system clock and it was set to ET. I also noticed that the options to automatically set the time and the time zone were turned OFF. This is puzzling because it was almost certainly set to PT before i left. I am quite sure I did not change it to ET, so if the option to change it automatically was turned off, I cannot understand how it got changed.
Is there a way to set the options so that appointments work like a paper calendar? That is, if I schedule an appointment at 9 am, it stays at 9 am regardless of where it is to happen or where I was when I scheduled it? This is how it used to work on the old Time Matters calendar. I never changed the time zone of the system clock and just had to remember to add 3 hours to any appointments that took place while away.
I would think that turning off the options to automatically update the time zone should do that in the Outlook calendar, but then it gets out of sync with my mobile devices which do update the time. I got several reminders on by mobile phone at 6 am for 9 am appointments.
I had a thought. What if Outlook allowed me to specify a “home base” time zone (PT) and then specify blocks of time (7:00 pm on June 26 to 10:00 pm on July 21, for example) when I would be in a different time zone (ET). Any appointments scheduled during any of those blocks would be assumed to be in that time zone. All others would be assumed to be in the home base time zone. As a check on accuracy, all appointment times would have a time zone suffix (ET, PT, etc.) indicating the time zone. Is something like this possible?
How do most people handle this?
Thanks