In August 2005, the United States Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which changes the start and end of Daylight Saving Time (DST) as observed in the United States. All states except Arizona and Hawaii will begin observing Daylight Saving Time on March 11, 2007 and end on November 4, 2007. Many provinces in Canada will also adjust their DST observance, as will some states and provinces in other countries. This makes the new DST period four weeks longer than before. These changes will impact many people across the world in a variety of ways.

One of the most common ways the DST will affect the country and the world is that calendar items (appointments, reminders, etc.) in Microsoft Office Outlook will appear one hour off. Any all-day event will shift and span two days because these events are associated with 24 specific hours rather than an individual date.

Microsoft has released a program to update calendar items in Microsoft Office Outlook to accommodate the new changes in DST. This program is called the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook. It was released in January 2007, and is available from the Microsoft Download Center. The Time Zone Data Update Tool can update calendar items in Outlook to accommodate the changes in DST during the extended DST period.

The Time Zone Data Update Tool is required to update calendar items that occur during the extended DST periods for the following versions of Microsoft Outlook: Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, the newest version of Outlook from the Microsoft Office Suite 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc.), can automatically update a person's calendar to conform to the new daylight saving time rules but the Time Zone Data Update Tool also contains additional improvements that are not available in the default install of Office Outlook 2007.

There is an Exchange version of this tool available. Before implementation of any tool it is best to contact your company Microsoft Exchange Server administrator or systems administrator. Academy of Computer Education Systems Administrator Eric Slade said, "We plan to implement the update through our Exchange Server internally for the company as well as for our IT consulting clients. This will make the process easier on our users. Although the update would be easy for them to run, many people are simply too busy to remember to get to it before the time change."

Academy of Computer Education (ACE) is located in Greenbelt, MD and offers corporate, Government / GSA and open enrollment IT, networking and computer training classes. For more information on putting together a company, on-site, Microsoft Office class or joining a regularly scheduled MOS class, contact ACE by visiting ACE is owned by Davis, Sita & Company, PA. Davis, Sita & Company performs accounting, business consulting and IT / Network Consulting for clients throughout the Washington, DC area.