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All-
As we know, one of the biggest bugs in Outlook for Mac 2016 is the ever-so-annoying repeated password prompt problem. This refers to the constant pop-ups that make it appear like Outlook is forgetting your password every few minutes, etc. The problem was much discussed during the Preview phase of Office for Mac 2016 but never corrected. I did some digging on the forums here and found other threads that covered this problem with slight variances, but the core issue is the same -- credentials are somehow not being stored properly or become corrupted during normal operation of the software. List of the relevant threads I found below. This list may not be comprehensive:
It seems odd that a major bug like this remained unresolved after the official release of Office for Mac 2016 ... and still hasn't been corrected! Per post responses on Microsoft's official Office Blog, they are looking into authentication issues with Exchange Server, but who knows what that means or how long that will take. Based on what I can gather:
e.g. username@DOMAIN vs. DOMAIN\username vs. username
A ticket submitted by forum member *Filip Herman* to Microsoft's technical support around early August 2015 indicated that Microsoft is aware of the problem and has a planned fix in progress. Obviously its been years since that. Others have submitted tickets to support since. Scroll to the end to read the most current progress.
I'd encourage everyone to mark this post, indicating that you "recommend this discussion." This thread has tens of thousands of views and hundreds of comments, so its clearly not an isolated issue. Unfortunately, my company abandoned the use of Outlook for Mac 2016 some while back because of this issue, so I don't have an active platform to test on anymore. However, keep trading ideas here as needed.
Best of luck-
Seattle_Expat
Using older versions of Outlook for Mac in business environments
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
How did you get the 15.13.1 update? I've been checking for updates daily and it tells me I'm up to date with 15.12.3.
Within Outlook, Help/Check For Updates
Worked for me.
Maybe someone has a direct download link?
You have to upgrade to 15.12.3 first and then check for updates again (if it doesn't happen auto-magically when the update finishes). You should see the 15.3.1 update after that.
Okay, I had four Exchange entries in KeyChain. Two were private/public keys, and I left those in place. The other two were related to my Exchange account. I deleted both of those.
I started Outlook, went into Preferences, and deleted my Exchange account. That took a while to run. Once it finished, I quit Outlook and, for good measure, rebooted my system.
Once back online, I started Outlook, added my Exchange account, and I haven't had a password prompt since. It's only been running for about an hour, but I was getting password prompts every 2-3 seconds before. This is, at a minimum, a huge improvement. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
After upgrading to 15.13.1 I was getting password prompts more frequently than with any other version. In many cases, Outlook wouldn't reconnect to Exchange even after entering the correct password.
I tried these steps: delete keys, delete exchange account, reboot for good measure, restart outlook and add the exchange account.
Haven't had a password prompt yet since doing that, and my laptop was unattended (and in sleep mode) for a while. Normally, reviving my laptop after it was inactive & asleep was a password-prompting nightmare. This is an improvement, by far. Thanks for sharing your steps - they helped me out!