# mail forgets passwords



## andyhargreaves (Mar 25, 2005)

Hi

Firstly, apologies if this has been answered elsewhere or is a well known issue - I've done my best with searching here and Google.  Sorry.


Right, I've just got my mac mini (pictures), my first mac.  So far I'm loving the whole experience, apart from one annoying little thing.  Mail.app keeps "forgetting" the passwords for my various POP email accounts, despite me ticking the 'remember' box each time I have entered it.  This doesn't happen all the time, but it is fairly regular.  There are not any other POP sessions accessing the mailboxes, and the accounts are from several different providers, so I can't blame one particular server!  Any suggestions welcome!

Apart from this, the mini has really impressed me.  Mine is 1.42GHz, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb with Airport Extreme.  The only time it's struggled at all was running Virtual PC, which I'm not going to use any more, so is not a problem (I've found a more satisfactory solution using my WinXP machine and VNC).

Cheers

AndyH


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## Pardus (Mar 25, 2005)

my mac does this ocasionally as well. i think it is more of a networking problem. When mail.app can't connect to my POP account, it asks for a a new password. i hit cancel and then get mail again and it works. sometimes you might have to make sure that the POP account is online by clicking the ~ beside your inbox.


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## andyhargreaves (Mar 25, 2005)

Cheers Pardus

Just a a troubleshooting exercise, I'm going to run another mail client.  Perhaps Entourage, although MS are bad at notifying about errors so maybe I'll find something else.

Any more experience of this problem?


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## bobw (Mar 25, 2005)

I've been using Eudora for years and never have any problems.


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## HateEternal (Mar 25, 2005)

I agree with Pardus, One of my accounts does that if I leave mail open all day. I think it is just timing out to the server. 

If you like VNC you should actually try using the MS Remote desktop app. VNC is nice but MS knows how to work with their own product better, it's faster in my opinion.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient

I think it also comes with Office 2004 if you look through the install dir.

Also, you might want to try Synergy if you have 2 monitors, it shares your mouse and keyboard accross the 2 computers.


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## texanpenguin (Aug 1, 2005)

Sorry to revive an old thread (it's not that old, and it's an ongoing problem), but is there a solution for this?

I want Mail.app to just give up on an account it can't access, instead of asking me for passwords all the time. The thing is these little "Please re-enter your password" boxes are keeping my computer from falling asleep at night.

Is this still a problem in Tiger Mail? Is there SOMEWHERE you can tell Mail to just give up if it times out?


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## Ned88 (Mar 26, 2009)

Here we are three and a half years later and still no fix by Apple....
I am running the latest Mail and Leopard updates, and still have the problem of mail forgetting passwords. Whatever the ISP I am accessing. It is really annoying.


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## cliveports (Jun 10, 2009)

Although we know WHY it does it (if the mail server is slow to respond Mail app thinks the password is not valid, this is why it asks for it again)  I still think that Apple could put in some sort of fix.
But until then, I found this, seems to work for me, don't ask me why!

_
In keychain access double click on the key chain for each mail account and select the second tab  'access control' check the "allow all applications to access this item" and press save changes. _


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## terryfow (Jun 10, 2009)

cliveports, your fix didn't work for me, subsequently I found that my ISP is experiencing a routing problem affecting one of their core data centres. Although this doesn't excuse Appple for not recognising this as a potential problem.


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## cliveports (Jun 10, 2009)

Oh well, worth a try. As you say, Apple should fix this, no other mail client I have does this.


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## Ned88 (Aug 19, 2009)

Cliveports:
Thanks. I tried your fix too and it didn't work for me.
I have complained to Apple. I think they have dropped the ball a bit with the OS because of their distraction with the iPhone, iPod, etc.

Mac is a better OS than Windows, overall, but the support seems really thin to me.

It is true this mail problem is just an occasional annoyance, but you do have to either enter the password or click cancel and then go in and re-enable the account.


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## cliveports (Aug 20, 2009)

It doesn't work for me now either, and I find that Mail crashes numerous times everday now. I always click on the "Send Report to Apple" what good that does I dont know.  It seems very unstable. Sadly I'm considering the switch back to  Microsoft Entourage


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## Satcomer (Aug 20, 2009)

Go to the folder /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access and find the entries for Mail's email server password setting and delete it. Then also in Keychain Access use the menu item to do Key Chain First Aid on your Keychain.

Then see if that helps (you will have to put in your Password one more time, hopefully. If this doesn't work, read on.

in Mail's Preferences->Accounts write down you email server setting because we are going to blow them away (without loosing saved emails). Then go to /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and throw the file com.apple.mail.plist in you Trash Can but don't empty it yet just in case. Then Launch Mail and put in your email server settings again and see if that works, it should. Good Luck.


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## Ned88 (Aug 20, 2009)

Thanks for the advice, Satcomer.
I will try it, and report back.


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## cliveports (Sep 22, 2009)

So...how'd ya get on? I'm still having password amnesia. Have upgraded to Snow Leopard and it still does it. Driving me crazy, switching back to Entourage...sadly.


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## Ned88 (Sep 22, 2009)

I haven't tried the above solution yet. The email addresses it happens most on are Earthlink, an their server settings finder page hasn't worked for a month. Maybe they are on the way out...    But it also happens sometimes on SBC (ATT/Yahoo), so I need to try the fix on that account.    So, yes, it is still happening and is extremely annoying, and I can't imagine why Apple can't fix this long-standing problem.  I will try the fix. Thanks for the reminder.


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## drh (Feb 27, 2011)

Oh well, its now 2011 and I'm using the new Mail.app 5 with 10.7 Lion and today had my first request for my hotmail password :-(

I have several mail accounts configured in Mail.app including Yahoo etc, hotmail is the only one that periodically asks for me to re-authenticate.
Once I re-type my password and check the remember option, the problem can go away for hours, days, possibly even weeks and then one day bang it will pop up again. As this thread proves this has been like a problem forever with hotmail accounts in Mail.app, its kinda starting to get annoying now!!


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Feb 27, 2011)

Sometimes it's not Mail.app "forgetting" the password, but the mail provider blocking you from checking mail too often.  Many public email servers (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) as well as different ISPs limit POP and IMAP email checks to every few minutes -- if you try and check your mail more often than what they allow, they reject your login.  Mail.app sometimes presents this as a "password is incorrect" error.

Try increasing the interval that you have Mail configured to check for new mail to something longer and see if that helps.  You can do this in Mail's preferences, under the "General" pane... adjust "Check for new messages:" to 15 minutes or so, depending on what you currently have it set at.


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## drh (Feb 27, 2011)

Ah, so thats a global setting, my setting is 5 mins, so I guess pushing it back to 15 mins will affect all accounts.

I'll give it a go, but I've never changed this setting in the last 3-4 years and hotmail doesn't complain regularly, its very sporadic when it does crop up.


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## Hallo (Mar 12, 2011)

try this...
open the "keychain access" app in utilities, under "passwords," find every incoming and outgoing mail server that you have and double click on it. click on the "access control" tab and make sure that the "mail" app is selected in the "always allow access by these applications" box. i found that the ones that kept popping up didn't have "mail" in there (my gmail account did and had no problems). seems to have fixed my problem. hope it helps.


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