Changing time zones problem

[Lauris Ancupans]

Hi, I just experienced an unexpected problem. Traveled to a different country, changed the time zone (1hr less than my home country) and suddenly there was trouble:
a) for some reason tasks got due time checked (11:00 pm)
b) some tasks got due date changed (to 1 day back).

This happened on my android phone.

Is this something known? Searching forum didn't help me.

For now I'm just manually changing the things, removing due times etc., seemingly there is no other option.

I wonder what will happen when I'll go back home tomorrow and change the time zone back.




Thanks in advance for comments and ideas!

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Lauris. I don't think that this topic has been discussed previously on this forum but it did come up in beta testing a few years ago. Some people experienced it while travelling, others when daylight savings time started or ended, and one unfortunate fellow was away from home when DST ended so some tasks were -1 hour while others were +3.

The issue was not resolved at that time. Some fixes were put into cloud sync that made it better, but not totally fixed and the discussion sort of faded away. Here are a few things I can tell you:

1. You are not alone or crazy, this is an actual unresolved problem.

2. MLO does not seem to really have due dates or start dates that don't have a time. When you turn off "use time" it apparently assigns the time to be midnight.

3. When you see "use time" clicking on by itself and dates changing what is probably happening is that your original date is being moved back (or forward) one hour so midnight this morning becomes 11pm yesterday

4. There was some speculation (never verified) that this problem affected only tasks that had been synched to MLO cloud while in the other time zone. This means that you can expect some tasks to move to 1am when you get home, but they will not necessarily be the same ones that went to 11pm while you were away.

5. A possible way to limit exposure might be to turn off cloud sync before leaving home and turn it back on when arriving home. If anyone tries this please come back and tell us if it works

6. This would appear to be a bug. Thank you for discussing it with the users on this forum, it gives us the opportunity to explore workarounds, but please also report it to MLO Support so it can get fixed.

-Dwight

[Lauris Ancupans]

Hi, thanks a lot for this comprehensive comment! Apparently I just have to adapt to this somehow. Problem is that I use calendar extensively - so not changing time zones is not an option, ehh... 

I'm back home now and fixing all those incorrect dates & times. I'm surprised that no more people have been asking this, there must be a lot of people traveling. This issue is quite annoying. Even more so because there's more frequent traveling for me in near future.  

[Dwight Arthur]

If that is really the problem and if your travels are relatively short, you could try just turning off cloud sync until you return.  You could still use wifi sync.
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

On Dec 7, 2014, Lauris Ancupans <lau...@laurulapa.lv> wrote:

Hi, thanks a lot for this comprehensive comment! Apparently I just have to adapt to this somehow. Problem is that I use calendar extensively - so not changing time zones is not an option, ehh... 

I'm back home now and fixing all those incorrect dates & times. I'm surprised that no more people have been asking this, there must be a lot of people traveling. This issue is quite annoying. Even more so because there's more frequent traveling for me in near future.  

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[Roman Romanik]

Hi, Lauris.
I travel frequently and suffered a lot of this behaviour.
I too thought it was crazy but I found some real logic behind it. It seems that MLO keeps "astronomical time", so to speak. (I'm sure there is a better term for that).
Real life example. I have a regular task, that starts at 01:00 at night Moscow time (GMT +3). By GMT, the starting time is 22:00 the previous day. So, when I travel to Belgrade (GMT+1), the task is shown as starting the previous day at 23:00. I did remembert that I had completed the task the previous day, so I thought I have some memory problems. :)

It is NOT convenient, because the majority of my routine tasks should start according local time (say, 6:15 - wakeup) and not "astronomical" time. But some tasks need to have this behaviour. For example, the time of a pre-arranged phone/skype call shouldn't depend on where I am at the present.

I understand that such a jetsitter doesn't have a right to complain, but I would like to have an option to fixate a task in time either astronomical or local


Hope it helps,
Roman

[pottster]

Interesting Roman. Probably the terms are "world time" and "local time" which have values that are relative (GMT +/-) and absolute (e.g. 1pm) respectively. I suspect that one issue here is that desktop/laptops take their time from the system clock which is based on a fixed setting for the normal time zone location whereas the gps in a phone can adjust automatically depending on physical time zone location. As you say, it would be useful to have the option to set the preference between world and local time at task level.

[Nick Clark]

This has been reported a number of times over the years, including by myself a couple of years ago. One problem is that MLO uses midnight as the time for untimed tasks which get screwed up on a sync in a different time zone. It would be better just to use the date.

[Lauris Ancupans]

OK so what I got from all the comments is that there's no real solution. Seems that everyone is just somehow working around the problem. 

Why, why, why is it so that MLO is such a good tool but with such basic problems sometimes that make me want to find a replacement ... :) Worst is that there is none with the same level of features.

Also I'm looking forward to the new Android version which it seems will feel like a miracle when it comes out :) 

​Thanks everyone for commenting on my initial question.​

Lauris

On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Nick Clark <nick.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

This has been reported a number of times over the years, including by myself a couple of years ago. One problem is that MLO uses midnight as the time for untimed tasks which get screwed up on a sync in a different time zone. It would be better just to use the date.

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