Mac Mail keeps asking for my password.

[pensa]

I was having the same thing. The smtp not recognizing the password as I tried to send. But it was the Pop account that was at fault. After repeated attempts to Repair Keychain, re-enter information in Mail Preferences and Keychain I deleted the Pop account in Mail Preferences and did a new one. It took about 5 seconds as Mail found my old account's information and created a new one. Immediately, I received 5 messages. Then the smtp account cleared up and sent my message...

So this looked promising but when I went to delete the account it said that it would delete all my mail for that account from my computer and i dont think i want to do that, right?

 

[dougfree]

Mail/Gmail Fixed

I was having mail problems asking for passwords every so often. Just thought it was a Gmail problem.

I checked my keychaing and sure enough I had several and one had the wrong password, one was for POP and 3 for IMAP. I deleted the bad keys and all if good now!

Doug

 

[mitjok]

Managed to solve the problem with Mail.app not remembering an account's passwords on Tiger. That's what I did:
1) Open the Keychain Access which resides in Applications/Utilities folder.
2) Go to Preferences.
3) Click General Tab.
4) Click Reset My Keychain button.

Hope this'll save someone time.

 

[MacBlackBook22]

Managed to solve the problem with Mail.app not remembering an account's passwords on Tiger. That's what I did:
1) Open the Keychain Access which resides in Applications/Utilities folder.
2) Go to Preferences.
3) Click General Tab.
4) Click Reset My Keychain button.

Hope this'll save someone time.

Thanks so much this helped to fix my constantly being asked for my mail accounts password
In Snow Leopard its called Keychain First Aid and its under Keychain Access.

 

[DolmenRage]

I've had this problem with all ogf my hotmail POP3 accounts, usually more than one time everyday. I tried waht someone suggested of deleting all the saved Keychain passwords, I'll see how that works over time.
If that doesn't help then I'll try to do the Keychain First Aid thing.

 

[Morisato]

I think this is specifically a mail problem. I've had this problem multiple times when I used to use mail. My accounts are gmail and I've had it while using charter and time warner ISPs. I've never had this issue with any other email client. I have no idea what the issue is but make sure for the smtp that you check the use only this smtp checkbox. I used multiple email accounts in mail and when I would get that pop up, I'd click okay and it would go away, but not really... what would instead happen is that it would send emails I've written from the other email account... is it becomes and incredibly embarrassing moment when you sent a professional email from you personal account.

 

[bart kul]

I have reset my Keychain as suggested, but it did not do the trick.

Only when I have additionally changed my Keychain settings so that it does not lock after few minutes nor does it lock when comp goes to sleep. Applications>Utilities>Keychain Access>choose your key chain and CTRL+C> Change Settings

After that no problems and no more asking for passwords: not sure but may be because the Keychain locks itself after 5 minutes of being in idle position, and so if you want to use mail after that time Mail will annoyingly ask for password (to unlock the Keychain).

 

[MacFlonz]

Aea: I'm not sure if you have Leopard or Tiger, but check these settings...If you access your Mail preferences, and then with the Accounts tab open, in the Account Information section, go down to where it says Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP). Click on the drop-down menu next to it and select 'Edit Server List..." See what kind of authentication each of the servers listed there have, if its set to None, Password, MD5, whatever it may be. If it says None, switch it to password and fill in the fields for the username and password. Click OK which takes you back to the Accounts/Account Information section. Now click on Advanced, which is to the right of Account Information and Mailbox Behaviors. Check there for what the authentication setting is, None, Password, or whatever it may be. Switch it to Password, and again fill in the information. Report back if it works or not.

JediMeister: THANK YOU a million times! The first part of your suggestion solved this problem for me! I registered just so that I could say thanks.

My situation: I have an IMAP account set up on both my MacBook and my iMac. All worked fine for months. Suddenly, when trying to send mail on the MacBook, mail.app would ask me for a password ("Enter password for user [...] on SMTP server [...]"). No idea why. What I would then do is the following: click "cancel", go to the "outbox" (where that email was sitting), re-open it, click "send" again, and then it would go through without asking for a password. Very weird. All emails sent after that would also go through without requesting a password. However, once I would close mail.app and re-open it, the problem would re-surface (for the first email sent in that session). At first, this was an on-and-off problem, even disappearing completely for several weeks (without any intervention), only to then re-surface. In the end, it became permanent (even the trick I mentioned above about clicking cancel and sending the message again from the outbox wouldn't work anymore). Some time later, the same started happening on my iMac. What confused me most was the intermittent nature of this problem.

I had tried a whole bunch of things, but long story short: JediMeister's suggestion resolved the issue! I had never noticed that option before ("Edit SMTP Server List"), and sure enough: the password field was empty. Filled it in, and the problem was gone. Hope it stays this way Thanks again!

 

[dirtydog529]

Yahoo account keeps asking for password

I had the same problem. My yahoo email account on MacBook Pro kept asking me for password all the time. Here is how I solved it.

On the MacBook, go to the Mail menu Item then Preferences, click the Yahoo account (or any other you are having trouble with??) and then the Advance tab at the top. Make sure the SSL box is checked. My port is 993. Authentication is PASSWORD.

Now go to Yahoo.com (or other?) and log into your mail account. On the top, right of the screen, click the gear/cog icon, then mail options. Down at the bottom of the list you see, check the SSL box. You will get a warning message. Ignore. Be sure to click SAVE button at the top to the page. Click back into mail options to make sure SSL stayed checked. Done. You computer account may ask you for the password one more time.

That seems to have done it for me. Hope it helps you.

 

[palmharbor]

Bug

This demand for passwords in Apple Mail is a Flaw...but do NOT
expect the Geeks at apple to fix it...Basic functions are not their
priority...its Facebook interface, iphone interface etc.
Sorry I had to be the one to tell you.

 

[mic j]

This demand for passwords in Apple Mail is a Flaw...but do NOT
expect the Geeks at apple to fix it...Basic functions are not their
priority...its Facebook interface, iphone interface etc.
Sorry I had to be the one to tell you.

Well I have to humbly disagree. The recent need to continually re-enter passwords for people with Yahoo mail account and using Mac Mail had to be a Yahoo issue. Many of us experienced the same problem on the same days and the problem went away at the same time without any intervention on our part. Yahoo Mail was the source of the problem, not Mail.