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
    2017-02-23T05:08:31+00:00

    Hi Tanner,

    Thanks for the information in private message.

    I understand you have worked with Mediacom support already. However, the root cause may be different due to different email services. If you don't want to provide the Account Setting information. Could you let me know how you connect the Mediacom account? Is it POP IMAP or Exchange?

    We also want to know if you have enabled two-steps verification and tried app password. The behavior may be related to the security settings of the email services. Any update is appreciated.

    Thanks,

    Chris

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-02-22T08:15:27+00:00

    Hi Tanner,

    The issue may relate to the settings of your email account. To help further troubleshooting the issue. Please provide a screenshot of the account settings as the following screenshot.

     

    In addition, I’d like to confirm if you have enabled two-step verification. If yes, you can try using app password to set up the account.

    Since the screenshot may contain your privacy, I have sent you another private message to collect it. Please click the link below to access your private message.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/privatemessages/list

    Thanks,

    Chris

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-02-21T14:24:36+00:00

    Hi Tanner,

    Thank you for sharing with us this information. I need to do more analysis and consulting on this issue and will reply to you once there is any update.

    Thank you for your understanding and patience.

    Thank you,

    Ruel

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-02-20T15:21:30+00:00

    Outlook for Mac Version: 15.31 (170216)

    Keychain still forgets my password various times throughout the day. When I turned on the computer this morning Outlook came right up. No problem. But eventually during the day while I'm using it the password prompt will come up. Outlook is set to sync with Mediacom every 5 minutes. So the prompt doesn't appear that often. Keychain is maintaining the password most of the time. Not sure what is triggering Keychain to lose it.

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