Outlook continually re-asking for password

Anonymous
2017-01-05T16:43:54+00:00

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

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For business

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Anonymous
2017-01-12T15:50:23+00:00

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:

  1. Go to KeyChain Access.
  2. Search "Exchange" under Login --> All Items and delete everything.
  3. Search "Office" and delete everything.
  4. Search "ADAL" and delete everything.
  5. Launch Outlook.
  6. 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:

  1. Open Applications/Keychain Access
  2. On the left, select the Login Keychain
  3. On the left, select the Passwords category
  4. 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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  1. Anonymous
    2017-01-27T00:54:43+00:00

    Unfortunately, Sam, the problem has started again. Outlook can't connect to the Mediacom server, and then I get a password prompt. Should I just continue to delete the Mediacom entry in the Keychain? I've done that and Outlook will continue to run fine for a while before it happens again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-01-14T14:59:05+00:00

    Hi Graham,

    Do you have any updates?

    @Tanner, glad to hear that my suggestion works. Please feel free to post back if the issue re-occurs.

    Thanks,

    Sam

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-01-12T22:21:58+00:00

    Hey, Sam. Your solution seems to have fixed my problem. Deleted the stuff at 10 am this morning and it's now 4:30 pm and Outlook has been running fine all day. No problems. THANK YOU for your help!!!!!

    Tanner

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-01-11T15:15:57+00:00

    Had to enter my password to Outlook 10 TIMES this morning before the prompt would stop popping up.

    I haven't been able to do a reinstall for Outlook because I had to order the CD from the software company where I bought a download installation. 

    But now that my friend here as continued to experience the problem even after a reinstall, it seems likely that my reinstall won't be successful either.

    Not sure what next steps should be.

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