Email Setting Issues

Earlier this week I upgraded to the most recent version of OpenCart.

I am having issues where emails are not sending when a customer submits and order, and not proceeding to the confirmation page.

Mail setting have never been entered into the mail tab in the store setting. Just the email in the store information page. Before the update we were getting order notifications without this being setup.

Looking in the logs I can clearly see email errors which I assume is preventing the code from completing.
I am playing around with google smtp server but that is not working, giving the timeout error. I have contacted the host to see if the ports are open to allow connections to google's email servers. The original email is hosted with Office 365 which I dont think they have normal server settings?

I would like to hear if people can offer what to change in order to get the email issues resolved.

Many Thanks
Neal

well, just to reply, with this:
Earlier this week I upgraded to the most recent version of OpenCart.
you probably kept others from getting back to you, too many things could
be 'weird' now, as you will find out, by searching this place a little on such.
Sorry for the bad News.
Ernie