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Appointments That Extend Past Midnight Appear Wrong

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› Outlook › Appointments That Extend Past Midnight Appear Wrong

Last reviewed on February 13, 2018     8 Comments

Applies to: Outlook (classic), Outlook 2010

Appointments that span two days but are less than 24 hours are displayed on the calendar as two appointments, one from the start time to midnight, a second one for midnight to the end time, as seen in this screenshot. This is how it has always "worked" in Outlook and most people consider it the "correct" behavior.
How the calendar used to work

If you are showing end times and the calendar is wide enough, the end times will also display.
end time display if there is room

To add the end times to the view, go to the View tab, View Settings, Other Settings button and enable end times.
Show end times

In day or week view, the appointment spans the hours it covers and is not in the all-day section.
day or week view

The Change Everyone Hated

The product team listened to the extensive negative feedback and reverted to the way it worked previously (and described at the top of this article), as of the March 9 2016 update.

The December 2015 update for Outlook 2010 (KB 3114409) changed the behavior of appointments which span midnight (for example 8 PM – 5 AM) but are less than 24 hours long. Everyone hated seeing all appointments that spanned 2 days as one appointment spanning multiple days. This the same way that appointments that are longer than 24 hours display in Outlook's calendar. (It's possible users would have been ok with the change if the end time was correct, rather than always displaying 12:00 AM)
monthly view of the calendar

In the day or week view these appointments are in the all-day appointment section, with the time period shaded if the appointment is marked Busy, Out of Office, or categorized. The period for Tentative appointments has hash marks, although they are almost as invisible as Free appointments.

calendar with the new behavior

There is one problem: the appointments include the start and end times; however, the end time is always 12:00 AM. When you hover over the appointment the correct end time is displayed in the screen tip.

Screen tip with the correct time

A second issue is the lack of visibility. Yes, busy, out of office and categorized appointments are easy to see, but only if the calendar color is not too close to the appointment color. Appointments marked Free won't show up at all.

This sample shows the unwanted behavior with appointments marked Tentative, categorized, Busy, Out of Office, and Free. (Because the days are narrow, the start and end times don't display.)

sample with busy, categorized, out of office, and tentative

Appointments That Extend Past Midnight Appear Wrong was last modified: February 13th, 2018 by Diane Poremsky

Related Posts:

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  • Check start and end times of new appointments
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  • Make 'Today' stand out more in the calendar

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Alan Lowrance
April 27, 2017 11:03 am

I've also noticed if you have an all-day event from 12:00am, the "end time" is 12:00am the next day which when you're printing it becomes confusing. You see Monday 12:00am to Tuesday 12:00am and at a glance you could make some costly assumptions. Why doesn't it put it at Monday 12:00am to 11:59pm or something so you see Monday to Monday instead of seeing Monday to Tuesday?

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Diane Poremsky
Author
Reply to  Alan Lowrance
April 27, 2017 4:55 pm

they have 24 hours going midnight to midnight - 11:59 would be less than 24 hours. Yeah, it can be confusing - even in list view. I've had more than one person see that and think its wrong.

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Ray Bailey
February 25, 2017 4:24 pm

I am using Windows 10 Outlook 2016 desktop. I just received a batch of appointments via CSV file that are exhibiting the same problem as this one. I have verified the CSV and the original source (Excel) source, everything appears it should display properly.
The displayed END TIME is 12:00 AM the following day while the actual time in the opened appointment shows the proper end time.
Any ideas, since this is 2017?

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Diane Poremsky
Author
Reply to  Ray Bailey
February 27, 2017 1:03 am

Which build of Outlook do you have? The volume license MSI might have this 'feature' in it, depending on your build. If you have a subscription version, try resetting the view.

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Ray Bailey
Reply to  Diane Poremsky
February 27, 2017 2:43 pm

Outlook 2016 of Office 365 v: 16.0.7766.7080 32 Bit. All updates installed.
Changed view, reload different calendars, copy to another calendar..nada.

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Diane Poremsky
Author
Reply to  Ray Bailey
February 28, 2017 10:48 am

That build definitely doesn't have the code that displays appointments that span 2 days but less than 24 hours "wrong". But... after rereading this (and creating appointments in an empty calendar) - it sounds like you have the "correct" behavior. (I updated the article to make it clearer and added a screenshot that includes the end times. )

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Alan Lowrance
Reply to  Ray Bailey
April 27, 2017 11:07 am

Yeah, that's my problem too. When admin assistants are printing itineraries for people with all-day events, it'll say 12:00am the next day which is technically right but very confusing. If you see you are staying at Hotel XYZ from Monday till Weds 12:00am that means you actually need to check out on Tuesday. Is it a problem with 12-hr time, where we can't display Monday 0:00 till Tuesday 24:00? With 12 hour settings it should then default to 11:59pm or something instead so it will say the correct day.

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Diane Poremsky
Author
Reply to  Alan Lowrance
April 27, 2017 5:00 pm

the person who creates the calendar (or who prints it) could change the all day events to end at 11:59 - or put the dates in the subject or notes.

Can you use the week agenda (day planner) style?

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