Having problems inputting appointments in Entourage 2008

[Jeff_Chapman]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: pop

I've noticed what seems to be a bug in the appointment input system of Entourage 2008. Here are the steps to reproduce the issue. I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or if there's a fix for it.

1. Create a new appointment on the calendar during the afternoon.
2. Double-click on the event.
3. Place the cursor in the start time box (just to the right of the calendar icon).
4. Type a 24-hour time hour value (such as 15 for 15:00).
Note that when you type the second digit, the input focus is suddenly lost, and the yellow band "This appointment occurs in the past" is displayed. Input cannot be continued without manually clicking in the input box once more to retarget the input focus.

My Mac OS X time and date preference settings are in 24-hour "military" time, as I am in Japan but using English as the primary language. I am using the English version of Entourage 2008.

Best regards,

Jeff Chapman

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

I've noticed what seems to be a bug in the appointment input system
of Entourage 2008. Here are the steps to reproduce the issue. I'm
wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or if there's a fix
for it.

1. Create a new appointment on the calendar during the afternoon.
2. Double-click on the event.
3. Place the cursor in the start time box (just to the right of the calendar icon).
4. Type a 24-hour time hour value (such as 15 for 15:00).
Note that when you type the second digit, the input focus is suddenly
lost, and the yellow band "This appointment occurs in the past" is
displayed. Input cannot be continued without manually clicking in the
input box once more to retarget the input focus.

My Mac OS X time and date preference settings are in 24-hour
"military" time, as I am in Japan but using English as the primary
language. I am using the English version of Entourage 2008.

Hi Jeff!

Mac OS X's 24-hour clock setting does not control Entourage's time/date
display. Instead, go to Apple menu --> System Preferences... -->
International --> Formats tab and adjust for 24-hour format there.

When you click on the Customize... button you'll see a drop-down menu
for Short, Medium, Long and Full time formats. I believe the time format
in the appointment area for Entourage uses the Short format.

In the field below, you can click on the PM and delete it. Each part of
the "7:08" example is a drop-down menu too. Click the "7" and change it
to the 24-hour time format you prefer.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Diane Ross]

My Mac OS X time and date preference settings are in 24-hour "military" time

Set your time under System Preferences --> International

Open System Preferences, and then open International Preferences. Click the
"Formats" tab. Under "Times", click the "Customize" button. Make your
selections. Click OK and then quit System Preferences. When you relaunch
Entourage, you should see that it is now using the correct time.

 

[Jeff Chapman]

William and Diane,

Thanks for taking a stab at my question.
You've now told me how to set and customize the time preferences
for Mac OS X. However, I already knew this.
My current time setting in the OS X International preferences
is as follows:

Short: 19:08 (hh:mm)
Medium: 19:08:09 (hh:mm:ss)
Long: 19:08:09:JST (hh:mm:ss:timezone)

So I'm not having any problems actually changing the time settings.
Changing the date format doesn't seem to be the problem.

The problem, ahem, is that the Entourage appointment/event dialog box
does not allow me to properly input the time in 24-hour format
without doing a lot of tedious and unnecessary work.

Let me reiterate the steps I take in clearer language.

1. In Entourage 2008 calendar view, I drag to create an appointment
in the AFTERNOON hours (let's say from 2 PM to 3 PM).
2. I double-click on the new event to open it (or hit ENTER twice).
3. The Subject text is highlighted, meaning that the input focus is on the
Subject.
4. I tab three times. The input focus moves to the start time.
The start time currently reads "14:00", which is equivalent to 2 PM in
my 24-hour OS X International settings.
5. Let's say I want to change the event to start at 5 PM.
The input focus is currently on the "14" (hh) value of the
start time. 5 PM in 24-hour time would be 17:00, so I type "17".
6. After I type the "7" digit, a warning message in a yellow band appears,
saying "This appointment occurs in the past" on the new event dialog.
Consequently, the cursor loses input focus. I can no longer type in my
starting hour. Worse yet, the start time now reads as 1:00, and
the end time has been automatically adjusted to compensate,
now reading 2:00.
7. I replace the cursor on the starting hour input box manually using
my mouse, and click to select the value. I then type "17", which is
the hour that I want to see (5 PM in 24-hour time).
8. Now the time is correct... but Entourage has once again lost the
input focus. Once I type that "7" digit of the "17" number, now
I cannot see the cursor, nothing is selected, and I cannot move on
to tab or type into the minutes box.
Once again, I have to manually click to replace the value in the
minutes box.

Basically put, this really appears to me to be a broken feature,
very inconsiderate behavior on the part of Entourage 2008.
Am I to blame because I am using 24-hour time?
I thought that the standard behavior for any database entry
or hh:mm formatted time input box was to allow the focus to
remain IN the box until the user hits TAB or ENTER to move on to
the next field. Entourage, on the other hand, presumes that the
user wants to hurry along to the next input field even after having
typed only a single digit.

I'd appreciate any advice you might give me. I can accept that
this feature is broken now, but I certainly would like Microsoft to
fix it in the next rehash of Entourage (and plan to report this if it is
a confirmed bug, although I'm not sure how to report it or if
Microsoft would actually confirm my report).

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

Basically put, this really appears to me to be a broken feature,
very inconsiderate behavior on the part of Entourage 2008.
Am I to blame because I am using 24-hour time?
I thought that the standard behavior for any database entry
or hh:mm formatted time input box was to allow the focus to
remain IN the box until the user hits TAB or ENTER to move on to
the next field. Entourage, on the other hand, presumes that the
user wants to hurry along to the next input field even after having
typed only a single digit.

Hi Jeff!

I reset my International System Preferences and followed your steps but
I cannot reproduce your problem.

While in 24-hour format (I tested with both 0-23 and 00-23 hour formats
for the Short format) and with Entourage displaying 14:00 in my calendar
appointment, I entered "17" with no problem. As soon as I hit the Tab
key to select the minutes section, my end time hour changes to "18".

Possibly, this behavior was corrected by either an Office 2008 update or
a Mac OS X 10.5 update. I'm running Entourage 2008 (12.1.5, which is the
latest update) with Mac OS X 10.5.6 and all patches.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Diane Ross]

I'd appreciate any advice you might give me.

Since Bill can't reproduce, try these tests:

1) create a new Identity and see if the problem exists there

2) If the problem exists in the new Identity, create a new User in System
Preferences and test there. Do you see the problem in the new User?

Let us know what you find.

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Hello Diane,

Thanks to you and Bill for sticking with me on this.

1) create a new Identity and see if the problem exists there

I did just that. The problem with inputting appointment times
doesn't exist in the new identity.
Everything is behaving very nicely.

In fact, after conducting this test, I then switched back
to the previous identity I was using, the one that exhibited
the issues in the first place. For some reason, the problem
is now fixed, and the input mechanism works correctly.

I even tried shutting down and restarting Entourage.
Now everything works fine.

I can only speculate on why this happens or if it will happen again...
it seems odd that just creating a new identity would solve the problem.

I'll continue to use it and will report back if the issue creeps up again.
Thanks for your suggestions on this.

Jeff

 

[Diane Ross]

I can only speculate on why this happens or if it will happen again...
it seems odd that just creating a new identity would solve the problem.

I'll continue to use it and will report back if the issue creeps up again.
Thanks for your suggestions on this.

We don't argue with success, but it would be nice to know what fixed the
issue by switching Identities. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I
seem to remember something about this as a fix, but unless I can do a mind
rebuild, the links are all missing.

If you had a backup volume with the bad database, could you boot over and
see if you can replicate the fix? Do you have to actually try entering the
time? Does just creating a new Identity work, or do you have to enter the
data?

Doesn't it feel good to have things working again?

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Hello - this is a bit of an old thread, but I found some new
information on this issue. (I might start a new thread on this
if it seems no one is following it, but for sake of clarity,
I'm leaving it with the original thread for now.)
The problem seems to occur when I'm typing an appointment
in on TODAY's date, and changing the time to a time earlier
than the current time.

Let's say it's 10 PM now, April 14, 2009.
In Calendar view, I click and drag to create an appointment
from 11 PM to 12 AM. The name field is automatically
selected, so I enter an appointment name and hit ENTER
twice to open the appointment details.

So far, so good. The appointment details dialog displays,
and the cursor is positioned in the subject box, with
my new appointment title.
I tab three times.
This brings me to the start time slot.
I type "1"... and suddenly, the warning "This appointment
occurs in the past" displays on the appointment dialog,
the cursor loses focus, and in order to continue inputting
details, I have to reposition the cursor and click again to
input. This is a real hassle...

I would classify this as a bug, because it does not allow
seamless input of appointment information, even if that
appointment happens to be in the past. The problem is
when Entourage throws up that screeching warning -
you have to hit the brakes and try refocusing the cursor on
the input box and type again.

If anyone else encounters this bug, please let us know!
I'd like to report this as a bug to Microsoft if it is reproducible
on other people's systems as well... it occurs on my Mac mini
and MacBook, OS 10.5.6 with the latest update of Office 2008,
regardless of which identity I'm using.

Thanks,

Jeff Chapman

 

[Diane Ross]

Hello - this is a bit of an old thread, but I found some new
information on this issue. (I might start a new thread on this
if it seems no one is following it, but for sake of clarity,
I'm leaving it with the original thread for now.)

Messages are deleted from the newsgroup servers and I can no longer see the
old messages. If it's been a while, it's best to start a new thread.

Instead of creating the new event in the calendar window, why not select to
create a new event. File --> New --> Calendar Event.

If the event is from a message use the default script, "create event from
message."