By Ruaan de Swardt
With technology being what it is, challenges do present themselves to the average QuickBooks user. In this edition we’ll be looking at 2 issues around Microsoft Outlook and QuickBooks.
Microsoft Outlook and QuickBooks
Whilst QuickBooks is compatible with sending documents using Webmail accounts such as Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail, the necessity to setup a desktop mail-handler remains the ideal option when it comes to configuring exchange accounts and synchronising contacts between QuickBooks and Outlook. We would like to share a couple of problems that our users have experienced recently and hope it will assist you in your QuickBooks endeavours.
Outlook is not an Option under QuickBooks Preferences
Some clients can’t see Outlook as an option under QuickBooks Preferences even after making Outlook the default mail-handler. You need to do the following:
(i) Outlook Options
(ii) Control Panel> Mail> Profiles
(iii) Control Panel> Internet Options
If you downloaded Office 2013 directly from Microsoft site, the chances are that you may be using Office Click-to-Run. Office Click-To-Run executes a virtual application environment on the local operating system which makes it difficult for other programs to ‘see’ it. This is because Click-to-Run has private copies of all its files and registration.
(NB: Office Home and Student 2010 and Office Home and Business 2010 also comes in Click-to-Run delivery formats)
QuickBooks is not yet compatible with Office in Click-to-Run format.
How can you tell which Office delivery system you are using?
Windows Registry will confirm whether Office is a Click-to-Run format or not. Simply go through the following procedure to confirm it:
1. Under Windows Start menu type REGEDIT in the Run field followed by enter.
2. Drill down the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Click-to-Run
Or
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\InstallRoot\Virtual\VirtualOutlook
Should you find that your Office 2013 is in fact Click-to-Run, you can then install Office 2013 over it by using an install disk. The two delivery formats can run side by side. You’ll find that your email accounts will still be intact. We suggest you do a custom install, choosing Outlook only. Alternatively, you may have to revert to Outlook 2010 or 2007 if you do not have an install disk.
QuickBooks 2014 is compatible with Office 2013, but not the Click-to-Run format which Office may be delivered as. If you are contemplating upgrading your Office suite soon make sure that you request Office 2013 with an install disk.
Emailing invoices from QuickBooks using Outlook with the customer message in plain text
When emailing an invoice out of QuickBooks using Outlook, the text part of the email is in plain text and cannot be changed to HTML format. Even when the Outlook program is set to use HTML format for the text in the body of the email, the text from QuickBooks will be in plain text – this is by design. QuickBooks will unfortunately only create the text as plain text and does not allow the format to be changed to HTML.
Reference: Quickbooks Intuit
Missed last month’s technical newsletter? Summary of what was covered:
QuickBooks is compatible with Terminal Server
QuickBooks is not a flat file
QuickBooks Toolkit
Windows compatibility
Third Party Integration