Troubleshooting Error "Send Outlook Mail Message: The Operation Has Timed Out."

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Resolution when encountering challenges while sending emails with the UiPath Outlook activities.

Issue Synopsis: The error "Send Outlook Mail Message: The operation has timed out." has been seen to occur sporadically in environments where UiPath "Send Outlook Mail Message" activity is being leveraged in the automation process.

The Outlook activities have a default timeout of thirty seconds. If this is not enough time for the activity to execute, the above error message will usually be thrown. The timeout is a generic exception and the exact cause can vary.


Troubleshooting Steps: In general, the following steps can help diagnose / alleviate the issue,

  1. Upgrade the UiPath.Mail.Activities package to the latest and check if it alleviates the issue.
  2. Limit the number of emails being sent.
  3. Limit the number and size of attachments in the emails being sent.
  4. Check for any ongoing network discrepancies.
  5. Check if there are any unusual spikes in the memory consumption when the process is being executed. If so, it might potentially be causing the issue and would need to be handled accordingly.
  6. Verify the group policy configuration for your system, especially if there have been any changes in the system policy updates in the environment of late. Our following article talks about the steps to do so: Checking Outlook group policy configuration
  7. If sending the email to multiple recipients, ensure that there are no typos in the emails addresses.
  8. Check for any antivirus or firewall restrictions which could slow down the Robot's execution.
  9. Place the activity in a Retry Scope, which will ensure that Activity is retried the number of times provided in the properties.
  10. Add a delay between each e-mail that is being sent. Add a higher delay initially (30 sec - 1 min) and gradually decrease it to find the best delay option
  11. Ensure that other processes are closed when the automation runs, especially if other Office tools are being used.

If the issue still persists:

  1. Collect the Bot execution logs and application event logs from BOTH the Bot and Orchestrator machines after reproducing the error for further analysis.
  2. Consider switching your mail mechanism to an alternative, for example SMTP or MS Office365. (More information on Mail Activities can be found here) .

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