This is a frustrating story of a poorly-defined bug with no solution. Feel free to look away if this doesn’t apply to you. Starting a month ago, Outlook began prompting a few of my clients for passwords. It has been prompting them a lot. At its worst, Outlook password prompts are popping up every ten or fifteen minutes. These are all users running Outlook 2016 with Office 365 mailboxes.
How to Stop Outlook from Asking for Password. Some people come across the problem that Outlook 2010/2013/2016 keeps popping up a prompt dialog to ask for password; this may happen when or after Outlook starts or while sending emails.The reason can be various.
There are no recent changes to their accounts. The company subscriptions are active. Passwords have not expired and are set not to expire. One business was hit particularly hard – many of its employees started getting the prompts over the course of a few days. All of them were dutifully filling in their passwords and checking the “Remember my credentials” box, of course, but then having the prompts return over and over again. Occasionally it slows down and they’re blessed with a few quiet days but then, out of nowhere, unwelcome prompts start popping up again.
In the last week, I’ve heard the same story from several more clients. Outlook bugs don’t happen in a vacuum. There are millions of Outlook users with Office 365 mailboxes. There are hundreds of online forums where Office 365 and Outlook bugs and problems are discussed in near real time. If anything unusual is happening to my small business clients with the simplest possible setups, then it should also be happening to many, many other people.
I expect to be able to search online and find an answer, a workaround, or at least some confirmation that a problem is widespread. If a lot of people are seeing persistent password prompts, there should be lively discussions online. This problem has been spooky. Although it was causing more than one of my clients to go batty throughout July, there was almost nothing online to suggest that it was affecting anyone else. Finally this week three discussions of the problem turned up on Reddit,.
“We have around 30 workstations here and since last week some people are getting random prompts asking for the e-mail accounts password in Outlook. It happens at random times, to random people and random workstations. Entering the password doesn’t work, it just gives the prompt again.” A few commenters in the Reddit threads refer vaguely to Microsoft acknowledging a problem with their “Autodiscover API.” I didn’t get anything from Microsoft when I spoke to them and no one seems confident that there’s a fix in the works. When Outlook prompts unnecessarily for a password, there are a number of troubleshooting steps. I’ve tried all of these and the prompts are still happening.
But if you’re an IT person diagnosing persistent Outlook password prompts, maybe this will give you some ideas. Here’s my checklist of things I’ve tried for my clients in the last month, for what it’s worth.
(As always, try one at a time, then restart the computer and test.). Run the. All IT support personnel should have this page bookmarked. Click Cancel on the password prompt.
Outlook might immediately connect normally. If Outlook says “Need password” at the bottom, click on those words. For at least one client, Outlook then immediately switched to “Connected” and hasn’t prompted again since then. Open Control Panel / Credential Manager and remove all passwords related to Office or Office 365. Create a new mail profile.
Ping outlook.office365.com. Thought the password prompts came up when pings fluctuated up to 400-500ms. Add some registry values to control Autodiscover, per. Install the most recent updates for the Office programs (in an Office program, click on File / Office Account / Office Updates). Change the password on the mailbox.
Disable the Microsoft Account Sign-In Assistant service, if it’s running. Do a Quick Repair of the Office programs. A few weeks ago I wrote about that are shaking the confidence of users. Business users live their life in Outlook.
It needs to be rock solid. It should be rock solid. What do I tell employees who are being hammered with annoying prompts that I can’t fix? They’re going to lose confidence in Outlook, or me, or both. I don’t like being in this position, not one little bit. If we’re lucky this problem will fade away and we will never know what caused it.
I’ll update this article if I get more information. Turning on modern authentication resolved the problem for my client that was the hardest hit.
I haven’t gotten any reports about this for the last three weeks or so. You’re still dealing with it after trying all the fixes? I don’t have anything else. Although FWIW, you might also disable IPv6, just to test whether it makes any difference.
It has been causing persistent problems for a few clients, leaving Outlook occasionally disconnected. I’ve never felt like it was responsible for unnecessary password prompts, but hey, you never know. SOLVED FOR OFFICE 365 For me this was a major issue. For future info (knowledge sharing and all that!), just been on to Office this morning via Tech call USA for the second time – this guy knew his stuff it appears (I’d tried everything before – reinstalling, deleting credentials from Credential Manager, changing passwords you name it). He started a remote session and basically said it is because on a lot of machines there are two versions of office (if you google the issue it’s a widespread issue) – using add remove programs won’t fix the issue so Microsoft have created a specific tool to remove all versions of Office 365 which can be found here: Just click on the blue download link and let it work its stuff. Then download the correct version of Office from the users account online – advise clicking on advanced so the user can select the correct version (32 bit or 64 bit) – it defaults to 32 if you just click on download as you probably know. Had this same problem occur suddenly and for no apparent reason as nothing had been changed to my Outlook.
Some of the solutions sounded a little drastic, so I looked for the least intrusive measures before trying the major credential overhaul or fix tools. I looked at the user permissions for Outlook and noticed that I had lost access to “Full control” of the permissions. Not sure how this happened except perhaps an update may have modified the settings. So from Outlook on the menu list,- right click and scroll to-Properties, then to the Security tab. Make sure you have “Full Control” of all the permissions as the signed in user. If not, click edit and re select the permissions.
Try this before any major file changes or modifications; if you are suddenly having this password message appearing. Hi, Reverting back to version 8326.2107 did the trick for me. So there is a bug in the latest updates for Office.
For me it was Office 2016. So follow the post from Casey Davis below. Casey Davis says: October 27, 2017 at 11:04 am @Sean Varley Rolling back fixed my issues on multiple systems.
Thanks for the info!!! Here it is if anyone else needs: At the command prompt, run the following commands: cd%programfiles% Common Files Microsoft Shared ClickToRun officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.8326.2107. Today I spent several frustrating hours trying to troubleshoot an Outlook issue. Outlook will continuously prompt for a password. As soon as you enter the password the box pops back up, usually with a password auto-filled and obscured, but clearly more characters than the correct password. I tried both clearing any outlook credentials in Credential Manager, and manually entering the correct credentials in Credential Manager.
I also made sure Office 365 was up to date, tried rolling back a couple versions nada. I scoured the internet trying every little fix I could find nothing.
Here is a related article. We have had this happen both at an organization level (happens to everyone all at once) and on random local machines (just a few people at a time).
If it happens to the whole organization, I perform the steps outlined in this KB to the Exchange Server: When it happens for individual users, I clear both the security and application logs and reboot the workstation (so far that has been the fix that worked for all but one of my users.) I’m still scratching my head on how to fix it for that last user. This issue has been dogging us for a week now with no end in sight. It is spreading as a new user is reporting this problem everyday. Strangely, in our case, it is happening to Windows 7 users only so far with all variations of Outlook.
I’ve had couple of affected users that I migrated to Windows 10. The problem went away! We have on-premise Exchange 2010. I’ve tried all the remedies to no avail.
Sometimes, the fix would work and Outlook would connect to the Exchange server only to dash my hopes as soon as I relaunch Outlook, log off or reboot the computer. Thanks so much for this thread.
This has been an issue on and off literally for years. My own personal setup of Outlook has accounts from Outlook.com, Gmail and Office 365. The only one that doesn’t give me trouble is the Office 365 e-mail. The others are always doing this.
I’ve tried clearing the various system logs and also just did what Sean Varley suggested and I’m still getting prompted repeatedly for the password on two of the Outlook.com accounts. I mean, literally YEARS! How has Microsoft not fixed this?????
Hello everyone, I wanted to post because mine was a similar problem with Outlook 2016 and 2013. This is my setup: 1 computer with two exchange account hosted somewhere else. 2nd computer with 1 POP3 account and one of the exchange accounts which is also installed in the 1st computer 2nd computer with BOX software (Cloud) both computers with Carbonite backup. I noticed that the 2nd computer also prompted for the “BOX” login information whenever I would restart the computer. I read and searched all over the place to try and find a solution with no luck. One day, I decided to remove the Carbonite software from one of the computers and Outlook is no longer asking for the password.
Since the experiment worked on the first computer, I decided to remove Carbonite from the second computer and no more Outlook password issues. I have been testing this two computers for over three months now and so far no password issues from Outlook or BOX (Cloud) In other words, maybe another program that is working in the background is affecting your Outlook. I hope this helps. SOLVED (for this particular manifestation at least!). I suspect my version of this problem may be unique but figured there’s no harm in laying it out in case someone else turns out to be in the same boat. Basically, a few weeks ago I installed Office 365 and began using Outlook 2016. I’ve had no problems until today when this “password prompt” thing started happening.
After some messing around and the usual muttering about bloody Microsoft, I remembered that something unusual had happened when I first set it up. My incoming server is different to the outgoing one and yet Outlook started working perfectly without my having to specify the outgoing server username and password. I thought “Weird” at the time but then forgot about it.
So, I went into account setup and changed the outgoing server details. The strange thing of course isn’t that but the fact that it started working without them. Anyway, so far so good and maybe, just maybe, someone else might be in the same strange pickle. I’ve been struggling with this for years. When outlook is working properly it never asks for a password. But then it occasionally starts prompting for a password, but it won’t accept the password.
Once I get into this loop, I have to switch over to webmail or reboot the laptop, and then it’s back to working fine again for a few days. I am not an admin on this system though, and it’s a government email account, so there is no place to find help. I am a software developer though, so I know how to use a computer pretty well. I figure if it works fine after a reboot, there has be some sequence of commands I can run that will mimic whatever is being reset when I reboot.
Because sometimes it’s just really inconvenient for me to have to reboot. Can anyone give me some ideas to try, given that it works fine after a reboot? I think a lot of the suggestions are here are for scenarios where it still fails even after a reboot. I ran into this problem when switching some computers over to Windows 10 Pro last year. However I have also run across the problem with Windows 7 Pro.
The issue appears to be with at least Office 2010, 2013, and 2016. I wish I had documented where I eventually ran across the solution so the person responsible could get the credit deserves. I can tell you it was not anyone working for Microsoft as those “technicians” never even understood the problem presented to them.
Create a file in notepad (our your favorite editor) and save it as text with a.reg extension, such as CryptoFix.reg —- copy the following and paste into your editor —- Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00;Fixes issue in Win 10 and Win 8 which prevents domain computers from handshaking credentials properly HKEYLOCALMACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Cryptography Protect Providers df9d8cd0-1501-11d1-8c7a-00c04fc297eb “ProtectionPolicy”=dword:00000001 —- copy the above and paste into your editor —- Save the file (making sure it is saved as a ‘.reg’ file. As and administrator, right-mouse-click on the file and allow it to be merged into the registry. Reboot the computer. Open Outlook and enter the password, ensure the box is checked to retain the password and accept. We have the same issue.
No one has reported this except people who use docking stations with Office 2016 + Windows 10, our mailboxes are on O365 with Hybrid E2k13 setup. Our users after undocking the laptop get “Need password”, Outlook will never connect from this situation. We have to credentials from cred man and then reboot laptop to get connected. Previously I have tried: however as i have just updated the Windows 10 to 1803, i will be deleting the registry key mentioned in the above article. I believe with this i should be able to get rid of this issue.
After hours of following complicated wild goose chases from the web, I stumbled on this solution which worked for me: Outlook 2007: Tools – Account Settings – Internet E-mail Settings – More Settings – Outgoing Server: Check the first box and change from the first bullet to “Log on using”, and fill in: e-mail address password check “Remember password” Office 2013, the same solution holds: File – Options – Advanced – – Send and receive – “Send/Receive” – All Accounts; “Edit” – Account Properties – Outgoing Server – fill in as above. I had this problem and have tripped over the actual solution to it. If you have an extension installed into Outlook that needs access to your MS account, for example the interface into OneNote, this prompt may actually be asking you for your MS Account credentials so that the extension can function — NOT your exchange credentials.
If your email is working but you’re still getting prompted, try entering your MS Account access credentials instead of your Exchange credentials. This worked for me. The problem is that Outlook uses the exact same dialog prompt for both functions so that when it asks for credentials you cannot tell which credentials it’s asking for. We had this issue on Windows7 Clients running Outlook 2016 connected to Exchange 2010, went through various steps such as Credentials Manager, new Outlook Profiles and even reloaded Windows and Office on one PC. We eventually found that the issue was being caused by the users connecting to additional mailboxes in the company, we removed the additional mailbox access and the problem went away, the thing that threw us was that the Login Prompt asked for the actual user’s mailbox credentials so we assumed the issue was to do with their account rather than the shared mailbox. The permissions for our user to connect to the additional mailbox was setup in EMC, if we remove these permissions and add the shared mailbox in Outlook (Account Settings – Account Settings – New) it works ok.
I guess this has been caused by an Office 2016 Update as nothing else has changed on-site, this has also been implied elsewhere as some have fixed it by rolling back to an earlier build of Office. Hope that helps someone out there. Wish I had seen this article first and not last as I’d read and tried EVERY suggested fix with no resolution.
Thank you Sean Varley for the suggestion to roll back to a previous build of Office. To Andy Blencowe, my client also had several (past employee) mailboxes opening in Outlook along with her own. It would ask for her mailbox password 4x then pick one of the other mailboxes at random and ask for its password 4x. I also found that just closing the popup, waiting a couple of seconds and then clicking the “need password” in the lower right of Outlook connected the account to Exchange without prompting for password. 6 hours in and this article really helped.
Woot woot!!!! So I had this problem rear it’s head today – and it was quickly solved. Not sure if this is for everyone, but apparently outlook 2016, THE APP, wasn’t looking for my AD/O365 credentials – it was looking for the APP PASSWORD that was provided when I had to do all the stuff with my phone and text messages. Thankfully I saved the random password in a text document, but even if I hadn’t.
Log into Office 365 web Click your profile Click My account Click Security and Privacy Click Additional Security Verification Create and Manage App Passwords Create one (Name is irrelevant) Use that password when prompted by Outlook app. “One day, I decided to remove the Carbonite software from one of the computers and Outlook is no longer asking for the password. Since the experiment worked on the first computer, I decided to remove Carbonite from the second computer and no more Outlook password issues. I have been testing this two computers for over three months now and so far no password issues from Outlook or BOX (Cloud)”.
Did you add Carbonite back to the computers to see if the problem crapped sic up again? (Sorry for the typo.) That would be the definitive answer that you found the solution to your issue. Rob Garrett (in an above post) is correct. The answer to the problem is as follows: The prompt is not a domain authentication issue, or protocol, or Exchange issue or communication between the two (Domain and Exchange. The prompt is asking you for login credentials to your cloud-based Microsoft Account (a.k.a Office Account) Often times, the Microsoft Account or ID used is the same email address as you are looking at in Outlook. For the purposes of your Microsoft Account – this is a unique ID, but the password is different than you email account / Exchange / NT Domain credentials.
The password you need to enter is the one you would use when logging in to live.com or some other Microsoft service. It’s also the same account information used in Word or Excel in the “File–Account” section of those applications. Microsoft has not made it clear which account they want. You’ve got Exchange, or hosted email.
In a Windows domain, you have Active Directory. But the prompt that is the never-ending one – is the Microsoft Account. Is one of the leading IT consulting firms in the North Bay, providing computer consulting, network consulting, and IT support to law firms, small businesses, and individuals - onsite in Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, Sebastopol), Marin County (San Rafael), and the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland), and remotely for clients all over California. Provides daily computer tips, shopping suggestions, support information, security updates, and much more - written in plain English. Is a simple directory of obvious places, with links to five hundred web sites and online services. It's everyone's favorite home page!
Since last week, a lot of our users are bothered by Outlook 2016's credentials prompt. Entering credentials just makes the prompt show again, only canceling it and clicking the 'needs password' text in the bottom of Outlook's main window allows them to keep working for a while. So far 15 out of our 42 active Windows Outlook users have been impacted (not counting Mac Outlook, or holiday users). Everyone is using Outlook 2016 on Windows 10, Office 365 (hybrid setup with all user boxes in the cloud). Yesterday I've had everyone delete their stored Windows 10 credentials. This looked like it solved it for a few hours, but today impacted users report the same behaviour. All are on the same hardware, so it's very odd that not everyone is impacted.
There was no relevant change on our part afaik. I'm assuming this was an update of software/OS. Following other cases has not lead me far, I can't choose auth method (basic/ntlm) in 2016+365 Any leads to the cause are welcome. I've logged a MS case, with not much feedback so far.
The issue for me was WAM. Solution: HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 16.0 Common Identity 'DisableADALatopWAMOverride'=dword:00000001 Reply from Microsoft: By default, Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus (2016 version) uses Azure Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) framework-based authentication. Starting in build 16.0.7967, Office uses Web Account Manager (WAM) for sign-in workflows on Windows builds later than 15000 (Windows Version 1703, build 15063.138). Workaround: HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 16.0 Common Identity 'DisableADALatopWAMOverride'=dword:00000001 The regkey disables WAM use in Office, which can degrade the auth experience (users will see legacy UI and may be prompted more in other cases, so it's only recommended if the situation is blocking). We highly recommend deleting the regkey once the fix is out. The fix for Windows 10 should be shipped early next year, I%u2019m now trying to check ETA.
We've been having this problem since Friday 7/28 around 2pm with about 60 of our users. We finally got Microsoft to admit there is a problem and are now waiting on a resolution. Even though they say our tenant is no affected by it, but it obviously is. This is also not showing up on the health report. This was the last response we got from them yesterday on the issue: Thank you for your time on call.
As discussed over the call, I'm summarizing the discussion here: We had several tenants reporting the same password prompts issue in Outlook client. We took the required logs from all the tenant and involved our backend team into this ongoing issue. As per the update received from the backend team, the issue seems to emerging and the associated SI seems to be: EX111618 The issue is supposed to be resolved once the SI gets fixed. The backend team is still working on this issue and once we receive any updates from them we would let you know.
It would be recommended to keep a check on the emerging issue: EX111618 from the portal. Your patience is much appreciated and thank you for contacting Microsoft Partner Cloud Support.
Have a nice day ahead. Regards, Arya Mishra Support Engineer Microsoft Partner Cloud Support for Office 365 Phone: 866-425-9899 Ext: 2232898 Office hours: Mon-Fri 10:00 AM - 07:30 PM EST Rohit Hajare Technical Lead: Email:: 425-704-3638 Ext: 2232807 Office Hours: Mon -Fri 7:30 AM - 5:00 PM EST Chanchal Kadu Team Manager: 425-704-3638 - Ext: 2232728 Office Hours: Mon-Fri 7:30 AM - 6:00 PM EST. Yup.below is their final. Looks like a code issue in certain version of Outlook. Status Last Modified (Local Time) Message Service Restored Aug 03 2017 01:46 AM Title: Credential prompt issue User Impact: Users may have been unable to access Outlook via an Application Programming Interface (API) due to repeated credential prompts. Final status: We've completed the validation process and have confirmed that the issue is resolved. Scope of impact: Your organization was affected by this event, and this issue may have potentially affected any of your users attempting to access their Outlook Desktop client via a specific API.
Start time: Friday, July 28, 2017, at 12:17 PM UTC End time: Wednesday, August 2, 2017, at 3:07 PM UTC Preliminary root cause: A code issue in a specific version of the Outlook Desktop client was causing repeated credential prompts to occur. Next steps: - We're reviewing code data to determine why it caused the credential prompts and to prevent similar problems in the future. This is the final update for the event. Last Updated: Aug 2 2017 10:46PM UTC. I have Office Professional 2016 (version 1708) on Win 10 laptop. Issue has been happening since last Thursday September 28. Issue progressively got worse.
At first accepting my credentials, then not at all. Pop-up keeps appearing.
Outlook will not connect to the Exchange server. I have wiped out Credentials - does not work I removed.ost file.
Worked for a short time on Friday. Now, this morning. Broken again. The pup-up asking for password keeps appearing and won't accept password. Is there a true fix for this?
The issue most certainly is NOT resolved. Happened to me countless times in the past hour. Has been on on-going issue for me ever since I installed Outlook 2016 on my Windows 10 laptop over a year ago now.
As I have several different email accounts, I have Outlook configured to poll all accounts for new mail every minute. Sometimes I think this issue has gone away as I may not be prompted for password sometimes for several weeks. But sooner or later it always starts back with a vengeance and is going berserk today! Renders Outlook basically useless when this is happening unless you don't mind dealing with the multiple account password prompts every one minute! I'm a private user, not on an exchange server.
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