Calander events shifting days

Question

In September I added 26 calendar events, one every other Saturday, to set personal goals. Each calendar entry is a separate event, I am not using the Recurring Event feature. I've noticed that some goals are shifting a few days into the future.

• The events from 29 November to 13 December have shifted two days forward: instead of being on a Saturday they appear on the Monday two days later.

• The events from 27 December to 10 January have shifted five days forward: instead of being on a Saturday they appear on the Thursday five days later.

• The events from 24 January to 7 March have shifted eight days forward: instead of being on a Saturday they appear on the Sunday eight days later.

• The events from 21 March to 4 April have shifted eleven days forward: instead of being on a Saturday they appear on the Wednesday eleven days later.

And so on, the gaps get larger further into the future.

The only other event that I have added so far out is a recurring event every Tuesday, which is not affected (i.e. has not shifted). I do not cross time zones with this device, and the day shifting does not correlate with any Day Light Savings Time shifts. This is a work phone with a lock screen: my children nor anybody else has access to the device nor to the Google account with which it is associated to. I have very few apps installed on the device, such as Anki and Firefox. I do not have any social media apps, such as Facebook, on the device.

This is on a Samsung Note 3 on Android 4.4.

More information: This is using the stock Google calendar application, with the calendar stored and synced with my Google account 'dotancohen'. As these are the only entries in the 'dotancohen' calendar that far in advance, I do not know if the other entries would have be affected. I do have other calendars which are shown in the Google calendar application, connected to other Google accounts (such as my work account) are not affected. All the affected entries we added one at a time by hand on the device, i.e. I long-clicked the calendar in Month mode and manually added each entry. For that particular calendar (the 'dotancohen' Google account) I have never opened the calendar on another device.

Answer 1

This has happened to me on my Samsung Note 4 just recently under similar circumstances. I don't cross timezone and it had nothing to do with a time change because none happened. I'm also using Lollipop 5.0.1 so it doesn't appear to be an OS issue.

Mine was in the Google Calendar, not the phone's default one also. It did seem that it shifted after I synchronized the calendars with Google. It only happened to the event I had sat as reoccurring on an 'every other' setting. I'm guessing it may be a bug in the synchronization system trying to figure the days when having sat them with a 'every other whatever' type setting.

I fixed this error by editing the event (selecting ALL events) then moving it back to the correct Saturday and editing the occurrence to 'every second Saturday of the month' as it was and it seemed to correct all of them when synchronized.

Answer 2

I don't know if this can explain the events shifting multiple days, but here is information directly from Google Calendar Support

Time zones can be complicated, and sometimes this complexity can affect your Calendar events. Here are some of the details about how time zone changes throughout the world can affect you, and what you can do to resolve common issues.

Why time zones are not that simple

Here are some reasons why timezone changes can be quite complicated:

• Every year, a lot of countries switch between Standard Time (ST) and Daylight Saving Time (DST), and, unfortunately, they don’t do it at the same time. For example, in 2011, Europe switched back from DST to ST on Oct 30, while the continental U.S. switched on Nov 6. This means that the standard 5 hours difference between New York and London was 4 hours between Oct 30 and Nov 6.
• Every year, several countries decide to change their time zones or DST rules entirely. Recent examples include Russia, Chile, Belarus, and Egypt. Moscow used to be UTC+3 in the winter and UTC+4 during the summer, but when Russia decided to stay away from DST as of November 2011, Moscow became UTC+4 all year round.

To minimize potential disruptions of these changes, Google Calendar relies on UTC time (Coordinated Universal Time, previously known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT) -- a single “true” time -- to help avoid conflicts in all locations.

Whenever you create an event, Calendar converts it from your time zone to UTC time, using currently known conversion rules. By using one universal time for all events, Calendar can keep all of your guests’ calendars consistent regardless of which time zones they're in. When we display the event on your calendar, it is converted from UTC to appear in your own time zone.

Let’s look once more into the Russian example. If you in March 2011 created an event for Nov 2011 at 17:00 MSK, then according to rules we knew in March, we would store it as 14:00 UTC. After the switch happened in Russia, Google Calendar takes the new rule and converts this event to 18:00 MSK. Luckily, all participants and rooms that you booked are still available for this meeting.

One way you can test if it is in fact a timezone issue is to add "all day events" if those also shift, then there is something else happening. All day events are based on just the date, so they do not rely on timezones at all.