Outlook: Permanent prompts to re-enter passwords

Copper Contributor

I just don't understand it and I'm not getting anywhere. So I hope for your help.

 

Since yesterday I have a strange and very annoying behaviour with Outlook on a PC with Windows 10. Outlook asks for the respective password for all included Office 365 accounts (plan E3). Even if I enter the passwords and check the box "Save login data", they are neither accepted nor saved. So Outlook is no longer usable.

 

I have tried pretty much everything that is recommended on the Internet to solve the problem - but unfortunately without success. I have uninstalled the entire Office, rebooted PC and reinstalled it again, but without success. I have also tried with new profiles, but the behaviour does not change.

 

On other PCs it works. Online logins work too, only Outlook does not want to. One of the accounts has the role of global administrator and is protected by multiple authentication. With this account I have to enter a token additionally during the logon, which is generated by the Authenticator app. However, I am not prompted to enter the token. Rather, the familiar Outlook login screen appears and not the one that looks like a browser window, where I am given the opportunity to enter the token during multiple authentication.

 

I am at the end of my Latin. I have no idea why this happened and how I can fix it. Therefore I turn to you in the hope that you can help.

 

Thank you very much!

 

René

3 Replies

@temuco 

 

Some additional information is needed I'm afraid;

-This profile you're having trouble with, is it correct to say that you have multiple user mailboxes associated with it, including one that's an MFA-enabled administrator?

-Have you tried creating this Outlook profile on a different Windows 10 user profile? With what results?

-Have you tried creating an Outlook profile for a different user (non-Global Admin)? With what results?

 

Two things occur to me;

1) The same account(s) work on other machines, meaning it's not an issue with the AutoDiscover record. That rules out a lot of transient problems.

2) MFA + Not receiving the MFA prompt on profile creation + Permanent prompts to re-enter passwords = Updates. Ensure that Windows10 and Office365 (I.e. the Office suite installed on the computer) are fully up to date. 

 

It may even be worthwhile trying an app password (instead of the user password) when configuring the Global Admin's Outlook profile. If it works, it's an MFA issue.

 

The simplest solution, however, is to use Microsoft SARA 

 

https://outlookdiagnostics.azureedge.net/sarasetup/SetupProd.exe

 

If there are any updates required, it will download them for you. If it fails to create the profile for you, it'll help significantly in narrowing down the issue. Just be sure to select the option for "This is the computer I'm having the issue on". If you don't, SARA will close. Odd design.

 

Good luck.

@temuco  We had a similar problem where Outlook would keep popping up and asking for the user's password. I'm not sure if that's the same issue as you are describing. But we were able to fix it with the following registry changes:

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover /t REG_DWORD /v ExcludeExplicitO365Endpoint /d 1

 

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity /v DisableADALatopWAMOverride /t reg_dword /d 1 /f

 

If the above didn't fix it then we would do a full repair of Office and that would resolve it.

For this to work, delete the ost and nst files, then disable MFA or check if the users are not part of the MFA group in AzureAD. Try with one user if it is the case remove the user from MFA and delete those files. Wait for 15min or 30min then recreate the profile. We have experienced that on our side and resolved.