Microsoft's Canada timezone troubles leave admins fixing calendars, pretending they're in Bogota
Canadian regions stop turning back the clocks, Microsoft wishes it could
Microsoft's software troubles have once again been caused by a government changing the clocks. In Canada, parts of British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba stopped observing seasonal time changes on November 1, meaning those areas are now permanently on UTC-07:00, UTC-06:00, and UTC-05:00 respectively. However, Microsoft's vast software empire has yet to fully adapt to these changes.
The company has confirmed issues across various parts of its software, leaving some customers facing incorrect times, broken schedules, and workarounds while Microsoft catches up. Outlook users have been hit the hardest, as switching to the new Canadian time zones won't automatically update existing calendar entries. As a result, meetings scheduled after November 1 could be an hour out of sync.
Microsoft advises users to manually adjust their Outlook calendar time zone, and then update upcoming events and meetings using this new time.
Recurring meetings present an additional challenge: changing the time zone resets any previously moved occurrences, which then need to be recreated. Microsoft is working on an Exchange Online PowerShell cmdlet to fix non-recurring meetings, but this isn't expected to arrive until later in the week. A fix for recurring meetings is still in development, with no confirmed timeline yet.
Power Automate and Fabric users have to pretend they're in a different location altogether, with Microsoft suggesting Saskatchewan, Arizona, or even Bogota for Manitobans. SharePoint On-Prem customers have to wait until November 10 for correct time zones, while Power Pages users might see server-formatted dates appear an hour out until a service fix is released, with an expected date of December 12.
Admins dealing with the aftermath of the clock change are understandably frustrated. One sysadmin on Reddit claimed Microsoft's guidance was terrible, and they had written around 900 lines of PowerShell code to change users' Outlook settings and manually adjust calendar events. The guidance was published on October 26, less than a week before the change took effect, and it took four days for Microsoft to update affected products and provide workarounds.
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