Outlook changes time zone in recurring meeting requests

Question

We have an issue where a third party conference meeting invitation, when recurring, will change the time zone of the meeting. The header states "This meeting has been adjusted to reflect your current time zone. It was initially created in the in the following time zone: (UTC-5:00) Bogota, Lima, Quito, Rio, Branco.
This meeting was created on my own PC which is set to UTC -5:00 Toronto. My calendar is set to UTC-5:00 Toronto.
The web page created the meeting in -4:00 GMT Toronto.

This only happens when the meeting is recurring and only happens when sent to Outlook. If sent to a gmail account/calendar, the time zone is not affected or changed.

This would appear to be an Outlook issue as we cannot duplicate it in any other platform. Is it because the invitation is being created using GMT and the calendar is using UTC?

Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance

Answer 1

Hi @Liz Chamas ,

According to How time zone normalization works - Outlook | Microsoft Learn, Outlook uses a combination of items such as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), time zone offset, daylight saving time (DST) rules, and Windows time zone settings.

Please check if Date & time setting in Windows and Outlook app for both the organizer and the users use the same standard of setting.

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Answer 2

This sounds similar to the problem I'm having: the time zone is reset to Bogota (I'm in eastern US) for recurring meetings. It happens whether I invite others or not, though. It doesn't happen in non-recurring meetings.

It is persistent - it changes back even when I set it meeting by meeting.

The time zone on all my devices and in outlook are set correctly.

Answer 3

Still broken. For recurring meetings "change this meeting and future meetings" leads to some of the future meetings being set to the UTC equivalent time ignoring Daylight Savings. So, a 2:30 EDT meeting shows up at 10:30, but not for all the meetings, just some.

I'm trying to think of a polite way to say "this is a mistake my kid wouldn't have made at age 9 - and microsoft thinks we should trust them with our data?" but I can't come up with a way to do that.

Maybe copilot can: "If my kid shipped something this sloppy, I’d take away screen time. When Microsoft does it, they ask for more of your data and a monthly subscription. Incredible." (OK, I asked Copilot to soune like Linus Torvalds, but you get the gist. )

Only solution I have is:

1. do a reply to all (which capturs the meeting body) and note the days of the week/month the meeting recurs.
2. Cancel the meeting going forward
3. Recreate the meeting
4. If you're scheduling meetings with anyone using Google Calendar, start versioning them like sacred texts — Outlook and Google Calendar are like rival cults, each convinced they alone hold the divine truth of time, and your meetings are the heretics being burned at the stake.