"floating" time zone

When i receive an invite from a different time zone, it adds it to the calendar with that time zone instead of mine and shows "floating" instead of the timezone... how do I solve this?

i should add this only happens on my ipad, not on my mac

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I use floating time zone with all of my iCal entries. But then the times of the entries do not print when printing month view. Is there a fix for this?

I use floating time zone with all of my iCal entries. But then the times of the entries do not print when printing month view. Is there a fix for this?

Sorry to have repeated this question as if I were answering it. Just a mistake. I'm just now learning how to use this site.

Floating Time Zones messed up in Mobile Me and Published Calendars

Having researched this for 3 years, I'm sure only Apple can answer this... but it would be very reassuring to know if others are frustrated with this too!
FLOATING TIME ZONES, incredibly, are not supported when PUBLISHING and SHARING iCAL!
I travel a lot. I store my flight times and appointment times. When I'm in one time zone I frequently want to share information about my schedule with people in other time zones. ALL I want is to store and share my calendar items with the relevant time in the place they occur. SO I use Floating Time Zones. (And of course usually set my Time and Date for the place I am in)
IF someone reading this learns whether anyone CARES about this - please let us know. There is no real iCal support anywhere else except here.
I have used a Mac for 20 years and this is the first time that Apple has let me down, with no hope in sight.

OK: I am in Geneva when I make my reservation to fly from NY to Los Angeles. I enter a single event: my flight with start time in NY and end time in LA. I enter a second event - a wedding in Los Angeles.
Now I'm in Istanbul and trying to make plans with family and friends. The folks in NY just want to know what time the wedding is in L.A., not what time it will be in NY when the event happens. The folks in Geneva just want to know what time my flight arrives in NY so they can talk intelligently about what time my rendezvous in Manhattan will be....
All I want is to have the freedom to ONLY EVER see the time in the time zone of the event. I want to be free when I travel to re-set the clock to show me the time of the place I am in, without that changing ANYTHING in my calendar display.
Similarly, no one else that I share my calendar cares wants to know what time something in another time zone corresponds to in the time zone they are in at the moment.
I think it should be simple, but I can't seem to do it. I just want to enter the times that I want for the beginning and ending of an event, and for it to ALWAYS to display the time I entered and NOTHING else... on my laptop... on Mobile Me... and when I publish with iCal...
Is it possible?

How to enter floating time zone in iPhone?

It is easy to enter a floating time zone in iCal, but I cannot find a way to enter a new appointment with a floating time zone directly into the iPhone. How is it done? I can find nothing on this in the iPhone Users Guide or on this forum.

That means that the iPhone calendar is NOT equivalent to iCal. This is a big issue for me since travel is part of my work. My alternative is a Palm device where all appointments are "floating." The problem with Palm is that the other functions are not in the iPhone's league. I feel marooned in a spot where no PDA has it all.

HT4576 "Time Zone Support" in Calendars should be renamed to "Override Time Zone Support"

So, I live on the East coast and notice, while on a trip just outside Cupertino, that my iPhone Calendar wasn't updating to the the local time, even though my iPhone had correctly updated to PST.
Finally, at the end of my trip, oh so nigh to Cupertino, I find out that my Calendar's erroneous display of time was due to the "Time Zone Support" configuration option.
This is a GROSS misnomer.
iOS requires the specification of a timezone - else the time would be set arbitrarily and would waste the time (NTP) service provided by the cellular provider.
Thus, the "Time Zone Support" option under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" should be relabeled to "Override Time Zone Support" AND the ability to assign an event to a time zone should always be available (though defaulting to the current time zone - unless a 'Default Time Zone' configuration option is added).

The behavior you are seeing is actually inherent in most calendar apps -- the deal is that you are telling your calendar when something happens, not what time. Our company writes a calendaring+task management app for iPhone called Pocket Informant - we get this same question on occassion, so I wrote up a Knowledge Base article discussing some details (keep in mind - this article discusses some features specific to our app that you won't find in iCal/Calendar on MacOS X):
http://webis.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/123/0/why-do-the-times-change -on-my-appointments-when-i-travel-to-a-different-time-zone
In iCal/Calendar on MacOS X, when you turn on Time Zone support, you then get to choose the time zone that you are entering your appointment for. This helps you not have to do the "time zone math" in your head. Thus, if you are in CST and want to set up an appointment for 6pm PST, you can choose PST in the event editor as you enter 6pm. Note that while you are in CST, your event will display in your calendar at "CST time" (8pm), but when you fly out to PST, it will show the "correct" PST time.
While iCal/Calendar supports "floating time zones", I personally would caution against using them for everything (I mentioned a few reasons why in the above kbase article). Use those for events that truly are "time driven" rather than "point in time" driven (such as "I want to go jogging every morning at 5am no matter what time zone I'm in).
Hope that helps some!

Turning off Time Zone Support

Hi,
I have recently moved countries which are 8 hours apart.
I have had Time Zone Support turned on in iCal and my iOS devices. I also use Google Calendars.
If I try to switch time zones, all my appointments move by 8 hours. I don't need to know what the time is in other zones, I suppose what I want is the "floating" time zone.
I have tried to export and reimport my calendars but the time does not change correctly. Do I need to edit the .ics file in some way?
Thanks!

Hi,
If you need it I have a script to move all events in a calendar by a number of hours. See the script Offset iCal Events here.
Best wishes
John M
<hr />As I sell software on my site and ask for donations, the Apple Discussions Use Agreement requires that I state that I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Ical time zone issue - will not change to Floating or let me adjust

I have Calendar 6.0 on OS X 10.8.5 and cannot get the calendar time to adjust from Mountain time. I'm in Arizona where we do NOT change time - one half the year we're the same as California, the other half we're like Colorado. But Calendar has decided I'm Mountain time and no attempt to adjust that has any effect. I have clients in Washington State and Oregon, and clients in Arizona. But I can't have calendar invites or meetings set in anything but Mountain time. It's making me nuts. I can't select Floating either, per one suggestion. Please help!
I went to iCloud: Change your calendar’s time zone and tried all they suggested, but nothing works as it says it should. I cannot "set any time zone you want" with time zone support On. The "pop-up option" they mention when Time zone Support is On still does not allow me to select another time zone. Oh - and my iphone 5s shows the time zone as Phoenix, just fyi, with Set Automatically turned on.

Did you turn on time zone support in the Calendar app on your Mac too? Try going to Calendar>Preferences and on the Advanced tab check Turn on Time Zone Support.

How do I stop iCal from ever changing the time zones of my appointments?

I cannot figure out time zone support in iCal, and just want it never to move the time of an appointment when I change time zones. I have tried switching time zone support on and off, and it makes no difference, the appointment times change when the time zone changes. It's infuriating! How do I make it stop?
Thanks!

Whitecity,
According to iCal Help...Changing the time zone for an event: Choose iCal > Preferences, click Advanced, and select the "Turn on time zone support" checkbox...To change the event's time zone, choose a time zone from the pop-up menu in the Info drawer. To make the event appear at the same time no matter what time zone the main calendar view is in, choose Floating..;~)

Different time zones in the same calendar subscription

Dear kind helpers,
To state my problem as clear as possible, I need to be a bit long. Sorry for that.
I registered to a calendar displaying the rugby schedule for the VI nations tournament:
-> http://www.rbs6nations.com/tools/calendars/sixnations-fixtures-6n-all.ics
from the official web site:
-> http://www.rbs6nations.com/en/matchcentre/downloadable_fixture_list.php
The only thing you need to know about this tournament is that it involves 6 teams (hence the name):
- 2 on the continent, then at GMT+1 (France and Italy),
- 4 on the British Isles (Englands, Walles, Scotland and Ireland), then at GMT+0
I think all of these nations have the same summer / winter shifts.
I'm on the continent, Central European Time for the time zone support feature on iCal (OS 10.9.1).
I guess it's GMT+1 plus winter shift at the moment.
I notice the same following problem on my iPod (iOs 5.1.1), sync through iCloud
Here the problem : it seems all the games are in local times !
For instance, a game in the Islands (Scotland, England, ...) appears at 5pm whereas I would like it to appear at 6pm (so the time is correctly displayed for British Isles, not for the continent) / a game on the continent (France or Italy) will appear at 5pm and I'm fine because it's right the correct time in my time zone. I've no idea how a game which takes place on the continent appears in the British Isles :-(
So a few questions :
- am I clear about the problem ?
- is it a problem from iCal or from the subscription itself ?
- in case it's iCal, is there a way to fix the trouble ?
PS : I experienced the same problem with an other subscription a few years ago ; it was also for a european championship schedule across different time zones displayed in the same calendar. This one was discontinued.
Thanks in advance.

Hi,
This is an issue with the subscription itself. The times for the events are set in 'floating' time and whatever time zone you use it iCal will show the event as being at that time local time (which obviously won't be right unless you are in the correct time zone).
I could post a more technical explanation if you like.
Best wishes
John M

Getting the time zone support right

When I take an international trip I can never seem to get this right, and calendar events go slip-sliding all over the place.
I have tried by time zone support on and off, but still previous events seem to get displayed wrong no matter what I do.
Currently I'm in Tokyo. Next Friday I'm going to St. Louis for a couple of months. I have a customer call on June 6th at 10 am central time. I just added it to my calendar by entering "Call with Coaches on June 6 at 10 am CDT" (see screenshot) and it created this event which correctly shows it taking place on June 7th Japan time. And I added a note about the actual time just in case.
So how should I have it set so when I am in St. Louis it shows up as June 6 at 10 am?
And what will happen with all my other events where I typically don't specify a time zone?
Thanks,
Doug

Hey Doug Lerner2,
Thanks for the question and superb details. I can understand how confusing Time Zone support can sometimes be. In my experience, everything is going to relate back to the main Time Zone Support drop down menu at the top left of the Calendar. This is the easiest way to quickly switch the Time Zone you are viewing.
Once you travel to St. Louis, simply switch the time zone of your calendar (if it had not automatically switched) to see all of your events in the local time zone (including events that don’t specify a time zone). So if you had your event set for June 6th at 10am CST, once you switch the Time Zone to central time you’ll see that that event is displayed correctly. All of your events that were created in Japan will move to their respective times, and you can also have “Floating” events that will ignore the time zone, and always be at that set time.
For more information, see these resources:
Calendar: View all your events in a different time zone
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11534
Calendar: Change an event’s time zone
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11531
Thanks,
Matt M.

Location Services vs. Time Zone Settings

i am being given advice to turn OFF Settings > Date and Time > Time Zone Tab > "Set Time Zone Automatically using Current Location" - presumably so that when i travel all my events stay at the time that i set them to. for instance in the case of a return airline flight, so that the alerts will alert me at the correct time.
right now - i think - that if the Time Zone updates and i am traveling east (say from CST to EST) then the phone changes all my appointments in Calendar and they all show up an hour LATER than when i originally set them. this way i miss my flight.
however, i am not sure if there are consequences to this.
also, i can't tell if i should also change the Settings > Date and Time > Date and Time Tab > and UNCHECK "Set Date and Time Automatically".
also, i am getting uber confused between the settings on my phone as compared to those on my MBP or on Calendar. Location Services i think is a iPhone specific setting whereas Calendar > Preferences > Advanced > "Turn on TIme Zone Support"
anyone licked this so that it all works?

hi braden.
i have tried this "empirically" a couple of times by traveling to another time zone but i was basically testing to see if i can get this to work. the first time i did this i did not get the alert that i set because something had gotten adjusted and the time of my event that i had set had gotten "pushed back" - i think basically due to the time change between CST and EST. this is a problem since when i travel it is helpful to have the alerts on my phone. right now i am having a hard time figuring out why it would not be the case - given the explanation in your tech articles - that this won't happen again if these settings are on. conversely, if i turn oen or both of them OFF - it is not clear to me what the consequences are.
there is such as thing as a "floating" event which is supposed to (i think) alert at any time zone at the time that you SET the event - so that it does not ADJUST based upon your traveling to a new time zone. however, there appears to be a lot of confusion as to whether this works and/or to what extent it has limitations.
for instance, is this a viable way to get calendar to work across time zones? i mean, the articles you helpfully post don't seem to address how this works from a practical perspective.
here are my settings.
MBP:
Settings > Date and Time > Date and Time Tab > Set Date and Time Automatically (currently set to ON)
Settings > Date and Time > Time Zone > Set Time Zone Automatically Using Current Location (currently set to ON)
Calendar > Preferences > Advanced > Turn on Time Zone Support (currently CHECKED)
iPhone
Settings > General > Date and Time > Set Automatically (currently set to ON with “Time Zone” showing as Chicago)
Settings > Mail, Contacts > Calendars > Time Zone Support (currently set to Houston)
Settings > Mail, Contacts > Calendars > Time Zone Support > Time Zone Support Slider (currently set to ON)
1. do i need to do anything special when setting an EVENT while i am in CST (for instance) but the event is going to happen while i am in EST? i mean, can i just set the event with these settings and leave it as CST?
2. do i need to MANUALLY adjust my iPhone and MBP - once i arrive in EST - to show up as CST in order to get the alert to go off at the correct time?
3. do i need to MANUALLY pull down an event to "FLOATING" any time this event will happen outside the time zone i am in?
4. are there any limitations to using a FLOATING event? i know one cannot set a floating event from the iPhone but if this works and this is the only limitation i can do this method.
5. i have heard some people resolve this issue by MANUALLY setting their time zone for their "home time zone" and they TURN OFF time zone support on all their devices so that the events happen at the correct time with no time zone adjustment. does anyone know if this method works? does anyone know if there are complications to such a move - for instance if i was to work in another continent for a period of time it seems like you would have to change your time zone and this would affect all previously entered events. but also i cannot figure out if doing this will let the TIME on my MBP and my iPhone read correctly since this is very important to me.
sorry to be posting on this but this is very difficult to test and threads such as there indicate there is a lot of ongoing confusion about this.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/24163748#24163748
any thoughts? or perhaps there is someone that has travelled recently and has this down to a science?
THANK YOU VERY MUCH

ICal and time zone stamps?

Apologies that this is long. It's three questions about trouble I've recently encountered using iCal.
I imported 80+ appointments into iCal from a .ics file created by Oracle Calendar.
1. The .ics file did not contain any time zone info, and iCal associated each of the imported appointments with GMT, despite the Mac's zone set to "Denver" in the Date & Time preference pane and iCal's time zone set to "America/Denver". Why doesn't iCal associate unassigned appointments with its own time zone?
2. Each of those appointments appeared in iCal at the correct local time, despite being associated with GMT. That is, with iCal's zone set to "America/Denver" I would have expected an item imported as, e.g., 10:00 GMT to show up at 17:00 in the iCal window. But none of them did--they all appeared as if they were MST, but with GMT stamps, and I don't understand why.
3. I didn't actually find out these items were associated with GMT until after I synced with my Palm Tungsten E. All of the items imported as GMT were shifted 7 hours on the Palm. So I went back to iCal and for each and every one of the imported appointments I changed the time zone to "floating" and then "America/Denver". (If I went straight from GMT to MST the appointment jumped 7 hours back in time, and I got tired of this.)
After that process, every event in iCal was associated with MST. I then synced with the Palm and found that, to my surprise, the imported events still showed up on the Palm as if they were GMT, i.e., shifted forward 7 hours. I should add that I didn't merge, I told the sync conduit to erase the Palm's contents.
Back to iCal. I used "Back up Database..." and "Revert to Database backup...", then sync, telling conduit to erase Palm's contents. No change.
Back to iCal. I select one of the troublesome events, "cut" it to the clipboard, and then paste to bring it back. After a sync that one event shows up correctly on the Palm, i.e., as MST as intended.
The question at the end of a long #3 is, if an event is imported with the wrong time zone stamp, why does it retain that stamp despite being manually changed to a different time zone?
I know the knowledge base has an article on incorrect time zone stamps, and that a possible fix is to export the entire database and then import to a new calendar. I didn't find this out until recently, and it doesn't address iCal's behavior so much as provide a workaround.
PowerMac G5 DP 2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.4)

After looking more closely at the .ics files exported by Oracle Calendar I see that events are exported as if they were GMT; iCal is, indeed, showing the appointments at the correct local time. This makes my first two questions irrelevant.
However, question #3 still remains: why or how does the original GMT stamp persist after manually setting an event's time zone to local time, "America/Denver"?

Time Zone Troubles.

I'm suffering a collection of problems to do with my date and time preferences.
Firstly, in the Date & Time preference pane, Time Zone tab, it won't hold my GMT London setting and keeps defaulting to Monrovia - Liberia, or any number of other places in Africa.
Secondly, No matter what time zone is set in the preferences, that zone's time is adopted by all other time zones. For example, if the time zone is set to GMT, and I open up a few world clocks on the dashboard, say Los Angeles, New York and London, they all say the same GMT time.
This is also affecting iCal which is showing all time zones as floating, and keeps asking if I want to change my time zone to Monrovia - Liberia every time I launch.
Does anyone have any ideas how I could fix this?
Thanks.
Paul C.
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hi Paul,
You could move to Monrovia, Liberia. It would certainly solve the issue.
You could also try creating a new account, name it "test" and see how your time & date prefs work in that User acct? (That will tell if your problem is systemwide or limited to your User acct.) This account is just for test, do nothing further with it.
Open System Preferences >> Accounts >> "+" make it an admin account.
Let us know and we'll troubleshoot this further.
-mj
[email protected]

Time-zone independent events and events that span timezones

Hi.
I use Calendar rather heavily. In fact, I have events in my calendar that date back from 1995 or so that have migrated forward from my Newton through Palms and Blackberries and now to iPhones - some migration or coexistence between the Mac and these devices was painful, to say the least. But, I digress...
For the record, I have Time Zone Support off on my iPhone and iPad. It's also off in Calendar on my Mac; the Mac is my 'authoritative' source of calendar (and address book) info. When I move, it changes timezones. For the most part, the iPhone and iPad do the right thing for events that have actual real times to them such as meetings. If I'm supposed to be on a phone call at 7AM Seattle time, when I go to Boston, I need to be on at 10AM and it does all the devices do the right thing with those events.
But, I want to create a recurring (daily) calendar event that happens at the same local time every day, regardless of what timezone I'm in. For example, I create such an event in Seattle for 9AM Seattle time (PT). When I go to Boston, I want it to happen there at 9AM ET; and the same if I went to India - 9AM IST.
Any thoughts? I live with this inconvenience for other things working quite well.
My other desire is when, for example, putting airplane trips into the calendar. I'm in Seattle and putting in Alaska Airlines Flight 12 which departs Seattle at 9:05AM PT and arrives at 5:34PM in Boston (ET). It would be wonderful, if for the the start and end times for event scheduling, there was a pull-down or scroll-wheel from which one could select the time zone. Now, I have to do the calculation and do 9:05AM departure and 2:34PM arrival. It's gets a little more difficult when one is going to places where daylight savings is not observed or if you are unfamiliar with the time differences (as when flying direct from the US to India).
Any thoughts on this problem??
aps.

Hey Armando Stettner,
Thanks for the question, and what a great question it is!
With time zone support on, you can edit an individual event and change the time zone for that event. This list will include options for your default time zones, UTC, and "floating" - the latter of which is what you are looking for. Floating changes the event to occur at the specified time, local time.
For information on changing an event's time zone, see the following resource:
Calendar: Change an event’s time zone
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11531
I look forward to hearing how this works for you.
Cheers!
Matt M.

ICal time zone support

Forgive me if this is repetitive. I do not regularly read these discussion groups. I've just noticed a little problem with iCal. We recently moved to another state and another time zone, specifically, from the Central to the Eastern time zone. Time Zone Support has always been clicked "on" in our iCal. Our iMac clock and time zone are set properly, to the Eastern time zone. I just noticed today that the iCal time zone on all my "events" is selected as "Central U.S." But they show up at all the correct times (i.e., Eastern U.S.) on iCal. Is this what Time Zone Support is supposed to do? Convert all the events to the time zone in which you are located? To add to my confusion, I just got an iPhone 3G, it's set to Eastern Time, and all the events synced from my at-home iCal show up one hour earlier than they should on the iPhone iCal. Any suggestions? Thank you!

suz..
I just did the following and it seemed to correct the issue:
- made sure my .me and iCal apps were set to the same timezone
- turned off timezone support, closed iCal, turned timezone support back on
- made sure i was not using 'floating timezone'
that seemed to clear things up.

"floating" time zone

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