Time zone fix on Microsoft Booking page

Question

I'm a TA at a university, and I have my personal microsoft booking page set up for office hours. For some reason, when my students book an appointment, I get an email saying the time, for instance 1pm, but they had actually booked it for 10am. There is some sort of time zone issue where on their end it says 10am, but when I see it, it shows up with a 3 hours time lag. I checked my basic time zone in the settings and it says East Coast which is correct, so what is the issue/how can I fix this??

---

Moved from: Microsoft 365 and Office | Other

Answer 1

Dear @Aimetti, Cassie, 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.  

As a moderator, I don't have the tools to investigate your specific account directly because this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators and contributors, including external Microsoft employees, cannot directly intervene in Microsoft product features or access back-end systems. Our role is limited to providing technical guidance on reported issues, requests, or ideas. However, I will try my best to guide you as clearly as possible.       

If you are using a Personal Bookings page (rather than a shared calendar for a department or faculty): 

• Students can still manually select their own time zone. 
• Bookings will attempt to automatically adjust based on the viewer's device settings. 
• If the time zone on the student’s browser or device is incorrect, it can easily lead to confusion. 

Therefore, if possible, you should create a Shared Booking page for future use. 

I tried to replicate your issue: I set the time zone on both my Outlook and my Personal Booking page to Eastern Time (US & Canada). However, my colleague’s computer was set to Pacific Time (US & Canada). When they booked a slot for 10:00 AM, it appeared as 1:00 PM on my end. I have attached a screenshot below for your reference. 

Ultimately, this needs to be double-checked on the student's side, as the issue isn't coming from your end. Alternatively, you could add a note to your booking description, such as: "All office hour times are in Eastern Time (ET). Please double-check your local time zone before booking." 

Please help me ask them to create a new booking from their side to check that what time zone they use.

I look forward to your support and response!

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".  

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.  

Answer 2

Microsoft Bookings uses two separate time zone settings, and a mismatch between them causes the behavior described.

1. The booking calendar (what appears in the TA’s Outlook/Bookings view and in confirmation emails) uses the logged-in user’s Outlook on the web time zone.
2. The public booking page (what students see when choosing times) has its own language and time zone setting.

If the public booking page is set to a different time zone (for example, Pacific) while the TA’s Outlook/Bookings account is set to Eastern, a 10 AM slot selected by a student can appear as 1 PM in the TA’s confirmation and calendar.

To fix this, both time zones must be aligned.

1. Confirm the TA’s Outlook/Bookings time zone (booking calendar)
   1. Sign in to Microsoft 365 and open Outlook (web).
   2. Select the gear icon (Settings) in the upper-right corner.
   3. Search for “time zone” in the Settings panel.
   4. In the Language / Current time zone section, verify that the time zone is set to the correct Eastern time zone.
   5. If needed, change the time zone and select Save.
2. Set the time zone for the public Microsoft Bookings page
   1. In Microsoft 365, open Bookings.
   2. In the navigation pane, select Booking page.
   3. Select Change language and time zone settings.
   4. Set the time zone to the same Eastern time zone used in Outlook.
   5. Select OK to save.

After both settings match, new student bookings should show the same time on the student’s screen, in the confirmation email, and on the TA’s calendar.

---

References:

• Set language and time zones in Microsoft Bookings
• Time zone and language settings in Outlook Web App
• Manage time zone settings in Outlook