Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
When your email program starts repeatedly asking you for your password, it's a sign of a problem. 99 times out of 100 it's the same, simple problem.
I have and use, on occasion, Microsoft Outlook as a default mail program. When I go to use the program, the login menu comes up asking me for my password. In my settings, I checked, remember password. I click "OK" and the damned thing keeps coming back and back and back each time I click OK. How can one stop this? After about a dozen or so clicking on "OK" and it will leave me alone for a short while.
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That's Outlook's way of saying something's wrong.
I kid you not.
In fact, it's a very common technique - many email programs will keep asking you for your password even if you've specified it and specified that it should be remembered.
They just do a really, really bad job at telling you why they keep asking.
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The 99% Cause
By far the most common cause is excruciatingly simple:
You got your password wrong.
Don't scoff. This is, again by far, the most common cause for this happening.
First, check the CAPS LOCK key on your keyboard. That's often a simple cause - you think you're typing in AReallyGreatPassword, when in fact you're typing in arEALLYgREATpASSWORD, which is most certainly not the same thing.
Second, see if you can login to your email service's web interface right away. For people that have had their account hacked this behaviour is often the first symptom. If you can't login to the web interface because it says your password is wrong, it's not your mail program that's at fault here; you have bigger problems.
Bottom line: most of the time the problem is just getting the password wrong. Make sure it works elsewhere, and make sure you're typing it in properly.
So, what if it's not the password?
The other 1%
When you go to check (or send) email, your mail program such as Outlook connects to your mail server and presents it with your account ID and password. If the mail server rejects the connection for just about any reason the mail program will often pop up the password dialog.
The mail program is basically saying "huh, I couldn't login, the password must be wrong" - even when it's not.
Like I said, not very helpful.
So the list of things that could be wrong and cause that behaviour is long and varied. Here are some ideas of things to check, or check into:
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The mail server itself could be having problems. If your email had been working and this just suddenly started, I'd call this about half of the one percent case we're looking at. This isn't something you can fix. See if you can find online status of some sort from your email service provider. Typically, this just goes away after a while.
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In the email program's account information that you provided to configure the email account, the POP3 or IMAP server name could be wrong.
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In the email program's account information that you provided to configure the email account, the SMTP server name could be wrong.
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In the email program's account information that you provided to configure the email account, your account user ID could be wrong.
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Your internet connection could be down or it could be having problems.
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A firewall could be blocking your attempts to connect to your mail server.
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... and lots of other reasons.
And of course there's always malware to consider as well.
But the important thing to realize is that this is not the email program's failure to remember your password. Instead, it's the email program's inability to connect and authenticate with your email service provider.
And 99 times out of 100 it's because the password being used is wrong.
Article C4495 - October 21, 2010
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
If you are comfortable with editing your Windows registry, try searching for "Password Is Not Saved in Outlook or Outlook Express" on a website www.theeldergeek.com
Posted by: Nick at October 27, 2010 2:55 AMThe full link is http://www.theeldergeek.com/save_passwords_in_outlook.htm
I agree with Bruce. I have 3 e-mail accounts which Outlook 2010 handles and if it starts asking for the password (infrequent) for any of them the only sure way is to close and re-open Outlook. I just live with it.
Posted by: Brian at October 27, 2010 3:35 AMActually, I find it very helpful, not frustrating, to do that. I got my hotmail hacked and it took time to recover it although the hacker(s) deleted ALL my contact list entries before sending a fraudulent message to all of them. Now, after I changed my hotmail to another hotmail account, I very often get not just the message asking for the passsword, but very often asking to copy the "characters" on a box, to make sure, it is not a spam or being hacked again. So, welcome this additional security, not condemn it.
Posted by: Maro at October 28, 2010 4:22 AMUsing Hotmail in Firefox on a computer with XP I always have to put in my password by hand--it is never remembered, whatever I try. But I also can not sign out in the way microsoft wants me to do that. I suppose the reason for both is that I do not accept third party cookies. By the way, I am happy.
30-Oct-2010
Posted by: Henk at October 29, 2010 9:33 AM
For solve like issues exist only some tools. One of them liked me and probably it would aid in this problem as well as me - password recovery outlook.
Posted by: vitocarleone at November 29, 2010 1:10 PM