Do I need to be concerned with timezones when creating events in my iCloud calendar?

Question

I live in California, and I need to enter over 20 events onto my calendar. These events are taking place on the east coast of the United States, which is where I will be during the events. How do I enter these events on my iPhone (to my iCloud calendar) so that the events list the correct times?

If I create an event beginning at 8pm and ending at 10pm for example, I do not want the event time to be shifted by three hours (going from PDT to EDT) when I travel. Since I am managing about 20 events on the calendar, it would be a hugely unpleasant task to update all of the events by hand.

For this example event going from 8pm to 10pm, do I:

• enter the event on my calendar as 8pm-10pm while in California
• enter the event on my calendar as 5pm-7pm (which would be the local time in California of an event 8pm-10pm on the east coast using daylight saving time)
• locate or change a setting on my iPhone that makes calendar events disregard timezones
• do something else?

Answer 1

If you have a number of events you want to enter and you have their times in another zone, it's very handy to use Calendar's time zone support.

First, go to Calendar->Preferences, and click Turn on time zone support.

This will enable a dropdown in the titlebar of your Calendar window:

You can then use this menu to change the display of everything in your calendar to a new time zone. Pull it down and select Eastern time (or whatever other time zone or city your event is in), and Calendar will convert all your times to that zone.

At this point, you can start entering events, using the times listed in the program for the event. You will also see a new detail in the event detail popup:

This shows what time zone the event is in.

Once you've entered all the events, turn the time zone back. That will display all your events in your own time zone. If you are syncing with your phone (which knows what time zone it is in) all the events will remind you at the right time.

Answer 2

Your calender knows the time zone you are in. I am east coast. If you want to get me on a conference call at noon your time, you send me an entry for just that, noon. My entry will be the correct time for me, 3PM.

To be clear, set the appt for the correct Cal time.