Outlook app shows birthdays one day too early

[German]Strange issue I recently recognized on Facebook. One MVP colleague complained that birthdays listed in Outlook app on his iPhone were displayed one day too early.

The MVP collegue wrote My Outlook App (2.81.0) for my iPhone shows birthdays one day too early. I checked time zone in my iPhone, the iCloud settings for calendar – all settings are ok. Outlook 2016 shows birthdays with the right dates, only the iPhone lists the birthdays one day too early.

Error known since 2011?

When I searched the web for the terms "Exchange Sync birthdays off by one day" I got exactly one hit in the Lenovo forum. In 2011, users there discussed the issue for Exchange. The solution was to open, change and save contact entries in Outlook.

A variation of the search resulted in a whole bundle of search hits. This old MS Answers forum thread from 2011 states that it is a known bug, based on an old date field in the Hotmail database. The solution is an update of the contact in question. The same can be found in this 2016 Apple Support Forum entry, which contains several fixes, from resetting the iOS device to adjusting the time zone settings. But here, too, changing the contact information and saving helped.

At Outlook User Voice you will learn even more. Since 2015, the contribution has received over 260 up votes. The issue probably only affects users using Exchange ActiveSync outside the US time zone settings.

Feedback of the person concerned

I had sent the above information to those affected on Facebook in advance. MVP colleague came back with the following feedback after I suggested to change the birthday entry:

I have now created new contacts with birthday in Outlook 2016. These were synchronized with https: // outlook. live. com/people/ – the birthday was displayed there one day earlier!! In the iPhone Outlook App the display under Contacts was like in Outlook 2016 and was displayed correctly in the calendar. Then I changed the date in the website to the right day. In the iPhone Outlook App and in Outlook 2016 it had no effect, so everything was ok.

For an existing birthday entry I was able to change the date in the website and it was inserted correctly into the calendar in the iPhone app. BUT the entry which is displayed incorrectly in the iPhone calendar app will remain! So I had 2 entries of which I could delete the wrong one.

So far, deleting the wrong entry has no effect on the contacts in the iPhone app, on the website, or in Outlook 2016, I hope it stays that way.

This allows me to conclude that all birthdays in the website have to be revised and then the wrong entry has to be deleted manually in the iPhone app. Not really user friendly, but this only seems to work that way.

It's always strange to see how old bugs drag on over the years and annoy people.