The Daylight Saving Time problem is for real! A couple of days ago, I noticed that an appointment I had entered on my BlackBerry for March 11 was showing up an hour too late on Outlook! As I started looking at other appointments, and found that every one of them between March 11 and April 1 was one hour later on Outlook than on the BlackBerry.
If you are syncing your handheld (BlackBerry, Palm, or whaetver) to your computer, you might want to take a look at appointments during that little three-week window. Also, you might want to simply add an appointment for a day in mid-March and see what happens when you sync.
If you find you are a victim of “DST,” the first thing to do is look at the appointments from March 11 through April 1 and decide which one is correct. If in doubt, one thing that will help is if you can remember whether you entered a particular appointment on your handheld or on your desktop. Everything I entered on my BlackBerry was correct on the BlackBerry and an hour late on Outlook. Everything I had entered on Outlook was correct on Outlook and an hour too early on the BlackBerry.
Once you know where the errors are, you can download a patch. For BlackBerry users, do this:
- Close BlackBerry Desktop software
- Disconnect Blackberry from computer.
- Go to http://www.blackberry.com/DST2007/patch/index2.shtml
- Scroll down until you come to a link labeled “DST Patch Loader” and click the link.
- You will get a message asking you to install an Active X Control. Click on the yellow strip at the top of the page to allow this to happen.
- Connect your BlackBerry to your computer.
- A button will appear that says “Install DST Patch.” Click on it.
- The patch will download. Be patient. The process will take several minutes and the little “progress bar” may appear to be frozen, but do not worry. Just give it some time.
- When the process finishes, you are returned to the the screen that has the button asking you to install the DST Patch. It sure would be nice if you got some sort of message telling you that you were finished, but you don’t. I am sure there are going to be many people who hit the button again, but at least YOU won’t be doing that.
- You can now disconnect your BlackBerry from the computer. You will find that a little hour glass is spinning on the screen. It may spin for 15 minutes. Don’t worry. When it finally stops spinning, you are done!
At this point, the appointments on your BlackBerry and those on Outlook will at the least be the same. It does not mean they are correct. You will need to look at each one to determine if it is correct or an hour off. Make corrections as needed. The next time you sync, the corrections will transfer.
Anonymous
March 14, 2007 9:42 amHI FROM COMPUMEX CORPORATION, I STILL HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM, I DID FOLLOW YOUR SUGGESTIONS, BUT DID NOT WORK. I ENCOUNTER THE SAME PROBLEM WITH DST SO WE TRY DIFFERENT WAYS, WE UPDATED OUR SERVER AND STILL THE SAME WHAT CAN WE DO??
[email protected]
Dr. Frank Buck
March 14, 2007 10:20 amCan you tell me a little more about what did not work about the procedure? I guess the first thing to ask is if your computer had been patched so that it is handling DST correctly. (IF you are running XP, that was part of a previous Windows Update.) Without the patch, you would experience a one-hour time difference between appointments on your BB and Outlook.
Anonymous
April 25, 2007 9:48 amI have experienced the same issue. I ran the DST update/patch and re-synced all my appointments. I am still getting an hour difference between my Outlook and BB.
Dr. Frank Buck
April 26, 2007 12:57 pmAre the appointments which are schedule for the present time an hour off? The only things that should be impacted by the DST problem are the three weeks in the spring and a week in the fall. If current appointments are an hour off, it must be something else. I would start by looking at the time displayed on the BB versus what is displayed on the computer.
If current appointments are OK, but you are seeing differences during that critical window, I would try running the patch again. I may be that it was simply unsuccessful the first time.
The carrier for my BB is Sprint/Nextel. If you are also using them, I have found their tech support to be excellent: 1-800-639-6111. If you are with someone else, and are still having problems, I wold suggest calling tech support at that carrier.
Dr. Frank Buck
June 7, 2007 5:04 pmCheck to be sure your time zone is correct on the BB. (Options–Date/Time–Hold the shift key to display the list of available time zones–Choose the correct one.) Do the same on the computer. If that dies not fix the problem, I have a 1-800 number that may help.
Frank