Outlook continually re-asking for password

Anonymous

Hi there,

Wonder if anyone can help - this issue is causing me considerable pain.

Essentially my mac outlook keeps asking for my password periodically:

Enter your account information for "XXXXXX"

User name: <My email address>

Password: <unpopulated>

<checkbox> Remember this password in my keychain

When I enter the password, and submit the form it asks me immediately for the same details again. Even if I select use keychain.

Then after two attempts, it shows me this message:

Mail could not be received at this time.

The server for account "<my name>" returned the error "Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password." Your username/password may be incorrect. Would you like to try re-entering your password?

No/Yes

If I click "Yes" it shows me the same dialogue again....and when I click "yes" again it disappears.

This process restarts every 15 minutes through my working day - but I do get emails sporadically. So its kinda disruptive!

Can anyone help?

Graham

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Anonymous

Hi All,

Thanks for your updates.

Firstly, I’m sorry that I may have misunderstood your different scenarios in the posts above. I have done more research and consulting about the issue and please check the different steps below:

@Graham, since you are using an Office 365 account, please double-confirm whether all the Office 365 related credentials are deleted on your Mac. (Although I understand you may have deleted the keychain folder earlier due to an irrelevant issue.) To check that, please refer to the steps below:

Go to KeyChain Access.
Search "Exchange" under Login --> All Items and delete everything.
Search "Office" and delete everything.
Search "ADAL" and delete everything.
Launch Outlook.
You will get the activation prompt and then If account is already added you will see the password prompt for app and ADAL again. Please do 2-Factor Authentication if asked to.

You can also let your colleague try the steps to see if the issue can be fixed.

@Tanner, since you are using a Mediacom account, I suppose you configured the account via IMAP in the Outlook for Mac client, right? Anyway, you may need to delete the Mediacom related credentials and the information in the thread that I shared above may not work for you. Please refer to these steps instead:

Open Applications/Keychain Access
On the left, select the Login Keychain
On the left, select the Passwords category
Find out and delete all the Mediacom related credentials.

Let me know how it works this time. Thanks for your time and cooperation.

Regards,

Sam

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44 additional answers

Anonymous

2017-01-08T04:53:59+00:00

Hey Sam! I only have 2 Office related credentials (shown below) and I've deleted them multiple times with no effect. I haven't done a uninstall/reinstall yet, but I suppose that's the only thing left to do on this problem.
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Anonymous

2017-01-08T01:02:08+00:00

Deleting the entries from the keychain worked for me. If I remember correctly there were five office related entires in the keychain. Once I deleted them I was able to login to Outlook 2016 (Mac) without incident.
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Anonymous

2017-01-07T20:33:20+00:00

Hi Tannneronman,

Thanks for letting us know the symptom and the detailed steps you’ve tried to fix this issue.

I have also done a lot of research about this issue and I noticed many customers confirmed the issue was fixed after completely deleting the related credentials in Keychain Access. As you said you just deleted the suspected logins associated with Office in Keychain, I would suggest you thoroughly delete them again to see if there is any improvement. For more details, please refer to MactheMoo’s reply in this thread (page 21).

Also, as you said the issue was developed after an Office update, have you tried to uninstall and reinstall the Outlook for Mac client to see if the issue is related to the corrupt Outlook for Mac client? Note: Please follow the link to back up your data before the un-installation.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj984224%28v=office.16%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Thanks,

Sam
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Anonymous

2017-01-07T04:39:18+00:00
I've tried everything I've seen on the web about this issue, including this site.

Problem in a nutshell: I'm running Outlook 2016 for Mac (15.29/161209). The connection to the mail server (Mediacom) is wildly erractic. Connects for a minute and then disconnects for hours. Quitting and restarting Outlook sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't. When I restart I get a prompt to enter the password for my account. I enter it, check the box to remember in the Keychain, hit OK, and then the prompt returns with the same request. This happens 3 or 4 times in a row. When I open my Account details I see that the password box is empty.

Just a moment ago the password prompt appeared, I put my password in and the following message appeared:

This message appears all the time. Even though this message appeared, a few moments ago Outlook connected to the server and synced the folders. Right now things are connected but I don't know why.

This is what I've tried that hasn't worked:
1. Deleted the suspected logins associated with Office in Keychain.
2. Changed the incoming/outgoing server names. (Mediacom has 2)
3. Changed the ports #s.
4. Added the domain name to my user name.
Outlook ran fine earlier last year, but I noticed this problem developed after an update.

My webmail account on Mediacom works just fine. And my iPad, which uses the same settings as on my iMac (which runs Outlook), works fine. So the problem is not with Mediacom and it's not with the mail settings I'm using. The problem is with Outlook.
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