This is something that might be odd for people who have recently switched from a consumer phone to a BlackBerry. When you change times zones, your BlackBerry does not automatically change the time, even if you program your phone to update cell towers. No, you’ll continue to see everything in your home time.
You can fix this manually, though. All you have to do is go to Options. From there, click “Date/Time.” The top option on that page will be time zone. Just click the text, and you’ll get an option for every time zone around the world. Select the correct one, and voila! You’re updated. However, this does cause an unintended issue.
Say you live in California. Next week, you’ve scheduled a meeting in New York for 1 p.m. local time. So the schedule is in your BlackBerry calendar, and you continue your week as normal. You fly out to NYC and lose three hours. Because you’re going to be there for a week, you use the above method to change your BlackBerry time zone. In New York, you get your calendar update…at 4 p.m.! You know, three hours after your scheduled meeting.
This is because when you update your BlackBerry’s time zone, so does your calendar update. This can be horribly frustrating, especially if you’re traveling. It’s basically a choice between leaving your BB on your home time, or changing your appointments once you arrive. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. No, there is no patch or plugin that changes how this functions. And you’d think that after all these years that RIM would catch on to the agony this can potentially cause. But if you can remember how to enter your appointments, you should be fine.
The key, and the only real solution to this issue, is to enter all times as you would locally. So, taking our example of having your meeting in NYC at 1 p.m. When you enter that into your calendar — while you’re in Californa — you have to enter it in at your local time, which would be 10 a.m. That way, when you get to New York and you change your time zone, your meeting will slide to 1 p.m., and thus be correct. It’s not easy, and it certainly requires you to remember to do this every time.
But it can be a relatively easy habit to pick up. Because it’s either that, or 1) leaving your BB on local time, or 2) being reminded of your meetings at the wrong time.
8 comments… read them below or add one
You forgot to mention that when you make a calendar appointment on your BlackBerry there is a Time Zone option that you can use to set the appointment in.
As “Someguy” said, when you set the appointment, there is a field that let’s you select the time zone the appointment time is in. So if you set an appointment in another time zone, the Calendar will automatically shift it according to the device time zone.
I have moved to Adelaide in SOuth Australia in Daylight Savings Time Adelaide is GMT +10.5. There is no calendar option for GMT 10.5. Is there a patch we can’t find one. Thanks
I didn’t have a problem with the time change on my Curve until I got home. All my original appointments made in and for my home time zone (CA), are now 3 hours ahead after my trip to NY, even though I have returned and my phone TZ has returned to the home TZ. What do I do?
I am having the same problem as Megan, and am searching the internet high and low.
HELP!?
I set all my boss’s appointments from my desk in nyc in outlook using the time zone functions. On a trip to Australia, he did not receive his calendar reminders at the right times despite my having set the appointments with the correct time zones selected in outlook. What did we do wrong?
My problem is the opposite. I have a number of meetings entered for say Aug 1 to 7 in my home Pacific Time. I travel to NYC July 15 but continue to get invites to meetings for the week of August 1, however, when I check my availabilty all those Pacific meetings are offset three hours. Very annoying.
This phone is so ridiculous I should throw it in the bottom of the lake, thereby causing all of the fish within a mile radius of it to die of frustration (or laughter at how inept this so-called smart phone really is). I am finished with RIM. Goodbye you inefficient, non-creative, union-impeded, sorry excuse for a corporate entity. You suck.