Forum Discussion
Outlook prompting for IMAP password
In MS Outlook 2021 on Windows 10 and in Fair Email on Android 10 devices all Outlook and Hotmail accounts on the devices started returning authentication error but seemingly could still receive and send email.... after the prompts for the password which appeared variable # of times each time and for each account were indulged. This is not occurring with g mail accounts.
For example, when Outlook on the PC is first opened then the primary IMAP account immediately reports an authentication error and presents the password prompt. Clicking on okay may result in a repeat of the prompt or may result in the password being accepted but it is always eventually accepted. When send receive all accounts is triggered then several or all of the accounts similarly request the credentials again requiring that the existing credentials be entered a viable # of times before selecting them. Once that is done then if a send-all accounts is immediately invoked then all accounts may go through OK but after some time or after outlook is closed and opened then the accounts may or may not again require acknowledgment of the prompt one of more times.
In Fair Email on android the symptom is similar where attempts to access accounts fail for several or all but eventually go through. Unlike with Outlook, in the case of android sending receive all rarely works for all of the accounts but then accessing them one at a time does eventually work, again without changing any settings or the password - just entering the existing value again without changing it.
Thinking that this might relate to changes that Microsoft has announced to the outlook ecosystem (which should not affect me in MS office 2021) I double checked the server names and tested with the commonly recommended parameters, outlook.office365.com and smtp-mail.outlook.com (my default), and with the parameters that are autopoulated when a new account is automatically created in Outlook, imap.outlook.com and smtp.outlook.com. With both sets of server parameters the issue is the same.
In my case there seems to clearly be an issue with the Microsoft servers today or they have made some recent change. It is as if the servers handling the authentication are overloaded and or they are releasing the clients too soon. unfortunately Microsoft is particularly infuriating for their absolute unwillingness to offer any help other than standard tutorials which would be a waste of time in this case, even when they must know that there is some issue. In any event even if the issue I’ve experienced is not the same as what has been reported here I’m glad at least that someone is discussing these things. Thanks.
original question concerned finding IMAP password. I still have no idea where this is, if I have one.n0hairs
- You do not need to worry about finding password. You can create new password in few clicks by logging to your Microsoft profile. https://account.microsoft.com/profile/, Click on security, Click on Advanced Security Option and create a new "App passwords"
True but finding password for old account seemed to be a workaround that the original reporter wanted to try after encountering the initial problem; I’m speaking only to the initial problem that put them in the need to try that as a workaround. Maybe that means my posts should be in another topic but this was the most similar one I could find.
"Outlook prompting for IMAP password” when “I haven't changed anything to my knowledge and this is happening on both my phone and laptop” implies that there had been previously good access with that password, and that they were needlessly and perhaps counter-productively sent by Microsoft to Office 365 to change password (when that is the last thing we would want to do if there are server authentication issues on the back end). An exception to that might be if the password had expired but there would typically be warnings about that and no such thing was mentioned. Also, it seems that even after the password was changed the account could still not be accessed. That set of symptoms does resemble the issue I’ve experienced which is clearly a server issue on Microsoft side (in my case if not the original reporter’s).
Also, in the server issues I’ve seen there seems to be a correlation between the number of email accounts being accessed by the client and the frequency of the issue but digging into that might be going a bit wide for this thread. That being said, in addition to being aware of the server-side issues which started on January 24 in the morning (GMT-5) and continue at this moment (Jan 25 midday), if people are having issues with one of many accounts in an email profile they might want to isolate the problematic account when testing (eg, send receive only that account)
In any event, whether or not there is a direct connection between the original issues and the details I’ve added, anyone testing logins to Outlook or Hotmail email accounts from desktop clients now should be aware that there are significant Outlook server-side issue at this moment which might falsely indicate bad credentials and induce a needless password change, as well as possible issues when multiple accounts are accessed by the same client.
- N0hairs
Perhaps I should explain. I was in no way being critical of any answers, my problem is slightly different. I have installed 365 on my imac and am trying to use Outlook and whilst it finds my email address it prompts for IMAP password. I have no idea where that is. Whilst I am am fairly computer literate when it comes to usage and following instructions if things don’t pan out I’m lost.No offense taken. Unfortunately with a backend server issue such as the one which has been going on for several days it can be hard to distinguish which case is a matter of the server outage and which case is a matter of proper username and password.
n0hairs It seems that this discussion has lost track of a solution for the constant prompting in Outlook to add email credentials that previously worked fine. I am having the same issue with my Imap account. I also have a POP account with a different email address and this is working fine.
My IMAP account has worked flawlessly for four years on this computer and suddenly this problem arises.
Microsoft Office Outlook 2019. It is up-to-date and I still receive/send mail. I just keep getting darn pop-up asking me to enter my username and password. Which I have done. I have changed settings to the account and repaired the account to no avail.
Is there an actual solution other than "Check to make sure your password is correct" ?
- Well, back end issues such as this one (which Microsoft has finally acknowledged) can erroneously present symptoms of a required password change when there is no need to change the password. As do you, I have known good configurations on multiple laptops and android devices which had been working fine a long time which all started having problems at the same time a few days ago, but the passwords eventually do go through. Assuming we are experiencing the same issue, We and other people may experience the symptoms to differing degrees of severity as the issue and then the solution roll through the network.
I should disclaim that I do not work for or represent Microsoft or represent this forum but I am a former IT professional with experience in particular configuring email profiles, and Microsoft has indeed acknowledged this issue.
Here is a link to a thread where I added more test results and where one of the helpers from this forum added a link to Microsoft's official acknowledgment of the issue which in turn links to other user reports.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/can-no-longer-access-my-hotmail-email-account-via/5a39b704-cfd2-4912-b1ee-6d480c9617cc
Again assuming you are experiencing the same issue, there's not much we can do but wait until the server stuff is fixed but at least we now know not to chase password changes or other setting changes. In fact this would not be a good time to change password even if that were the issue (which it most likely is not).
By the way, in my case, sending many send receive commands one after the other and repeatedly sending the same known good credentials seems to force the login and messages to come through but that experience may not be universal. There are more details in my posts at the linked thread.
