Lesa, this happened to us as well. We could not get an answer or any assistance from Timeslips. We had to open a case/complaint but got no where with it. It was excruciatingly frustrating that we pay a lot of money for this software, get no assistance, and basically was told it was an issue on our end. I feel your frustration. We too plan to find a better software with a company that supports their clients. 

Hi Lesa Cooper, very sorry to hear about your experience uncovering this issue. I've forwarded your feedback onto the Sage Timeslips support team to see if they have any further insights to share. Will update you with any news.

Although O365 is online based, you would still have the option of downloading the 32bit version of Outlook (version 2021 I believe) for use directly on a desktop. I'm assuming this was tried and failed?

Warm Regards, 
Erzsi

Yes, that was tried.  We have spent DAYS of trying things between O365 Support and Sage Support.  It doesn't matter if you have the 32-bit version - if you are using O365 - it DOES NOT WORK.  When we try to e-mail  bills out TS just crashed and closes itself.  It works until we try to send anything out via e-mail which is no help to us as we need to e-mail out our bills.

Lesa

Lesa, that is exactly the issue we were having. Sage never fixed or helped us solve the issue; however, I did make a change that seemed to allow me to e-mail invoices. This is what I did: Go to the SETUP tab, expand the OUTLOOK LINK, SETTINGS. In the "Contact folder path" our IT Group created a folder in my contacts named Timeslips Contacts, linked it to Timeslips, and enabled the link. We were then able print bills to emails. 

This has been working for us since. I am NOT an IT person but this seems to have worked for us. Try it and let me know if it worked for you. Why SAGE could not direct us to do this, I am not sure. 

Okay, so I am going to reply just to clarify some things a bit.

1) Timeslips is not completely incompatible with Office365 64-bit. That is a bit too broad a statement, and therefore possibly misleading to others who may read it later. What will not work with Office365 64-bit is the "automatic" emailing of bills. I.e., Timeslips will prepare the PDF attachment and email message, but then is unable to send it over to Outlook to be sent.  All other features of Timeslips that do not depend on Outlook work just fine. Slips, payments, bills, etc. But no, you cannot use the automatic email feature with a 64-bit version of Outlook.

It may surprise you, but not all users use that feature. 

2) I do not have any other solutions other than the suggestion to use the 32-bit version of Outlook.  That is the very first thing we try, and resolves it most of the time. If you are still having trouble, then something else is in play. Could be antivirus, antimalware, security not allowing the API with Outlook 32-bit to fire. But here's the thing. THERE IS NOTHING THAT WE CHANGE IN TIMESLIPS TO MAKE THE LINK WORK. It is always resolved outside of Timeslips, either by changing to the 32-bit, or tweaking permissions/security. Sometimes I've chased it for quite a while, and still not gotten it to work. Don't really know why, just know it got cost prohibitive to continue chasing.

One thing you can try is a new Outlook profile that uses a single gmail account. I had a client who's firm email would not work, but her gmail would. That told us that the issue was not with Timeslips or Outlook per se, but with that specific email account. 

Remember, Timeslips is sending a bunch of emails to Outlook for it to send/deliver. That behavior can sometimes look similar to behavior from a virus. bot or other bad actor. Outlook and your security software is trying to play defense against viruses and such, and may be over defending. Another thing to test is will it work with the antivirus off completely. If it works, then you know you need to fine tune the antivirus.

3) I am not attempting to diminish/discount anyone's frustration when it does not work. Yes, it is a huge PITA. Especially when it was working marvelously, and then now it isn't. I've had two of my clients ask me about this very issue this week. Both were resolved by moving to 32-bit. What happens is they upgrade their Outlook for whatever reason, and the default install of Outlook is 64-bit. So if you do nothing, you get 64-bit. Then it turns out not to work, and we have to take that out and put the 32-bit, but only AFTER the agony of finding out it doesn't work. Not a pleasant experience.

4) The advice to post/complain about it on Sage City was good advice, but there is a slightly BETTER place to voice your frustration.  This is not a new issue, so under the Ideas section of this bulletin board, there is a prior post from Whitney Hess about this dated 10/2/2019. Lesa Cooper , dbelcher, and anyone else having this problem, what you also want to do is go to that Ideas post, and both add comments to it and (most importantly) UPVOTE it. Right now it only has three votes (one of which is mine), so Sage does not see it as a serious problem. So, go  here: https://www.sagecity.com/us/sage_timeslips/i/general_product_suggestions/bill-emailing-on-outlook-64-bit

And then click the UP arrow to the left of the title to add your votes. Higher votes = more attention to the problem.

5) dbelcher while I do no deny that the change you made may have solved your issue, that setting is really for an entirely different purpose. It is when you want to synchronize Timeslips with your Outlook Contacts. Most folks do NOT want to do that, so I have never tried to turn it on for my clients. The only time I've ever fooled with it was when a client called and wanted me to turn it OFF, because it was driving him crazy. But it is possible that somehow activating that link gave permission for Timeslips to talk to your Outlook, and now the emails are a third party beneficiary to those permissions. Which is all fine if it is working for you. And it may work for Lesa Cooper as well. But is not something I have ever done to get it work. Just saying...

Hope this helps everyone.

Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
404-325-9779
[email protected]

The 32-bit version does not work either.  Someone named Roger who has advised he is the TOP muckity muck in your tech area is supposed to be working on this.  He is telling us it is an issue with GoDaddy being our e-mail/O365/domain provider.  Saying it has something to do with their overdone security.  We are a law firm - security is an issue for us.  We are attempting to get the two tech people together at one time to discuss between them without us as a less than knowledgeable middle man.  We would like to hold our breath and cross our fingers that this might work - but we would be goners if we did that!  I upvoted what you asked me to -- but we have tried so many different fixes at this point that even reading your e-mail is tiring.  Here is hoping Monday looks better and they powers that be can speak with each other directly.

Hi Lesa.  As you know, we have worked with your office and confirmed that the issue you are experiencing is isolated to a damaged computer operating system, and not anything related to a perceived incompatibility with Timeslips and Office 365 (32-bit) software.

As has been discussed in these forums ad nauseum, Google searches for "Office 32-bit vs. 64-bit" will bring up millions of hits.  The Microsoft website itself gives a precise explanation and the TL;DR explanation is you would use 64-bit when working with massive datasets and 32-bit for the rest of us.  

Emails are not generally 'massive' with thousands of pages of typed text.  Word documents are not usually the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Excel spreadsheets not usually the size of the census database for every human being on the planet or since the United States started enumerating citizens.  Some are! And in those cases, yes 64-bit is a requirement.  32-bit works for the rest of us.

Re-coding an application like Timeslips with many thousands of lines of code from 32-bit to 64-bit is a massive undertaking.  And from the Sage business perspective, it provides near-zero ROI to do so.  For now, that project is not on the immediate future radar.

Your issue was unrelated, as the connection you are referring to is for the Outlook Link which is not required to send emails.  Outlook Link connected contacts in Outlook to the Clients in Timeslips for the purposes of sharing the email address, names, phone numbers, street addresses, etc.

Your IT created or connected you to an existing contact folder created by Outlook.  The two issues are unrelated, but I am glad whatever they did corrected any issues you were having.  In your case you could just go to Setup, Performance Settings and disable the Outlook Link which would have no effect on emailing bills.  It will however speed up creating new clients as that connection is notoriously slow from Microsoft.