Cannot add new Gmail account (OS X 10.7.5)

[desertman]

A friend of mine has a Mac with OS X 10.7.5 and an iPad with iOS 8.4.1. On both devices is already one Gmail account active. Now she wants to add another Gmail account - and this works without problems on the iPad but not at all on the Mac.

When adding the account on the Mac the error message is always the same: "Logging in to the Google IMAP server “imap.gmail.com” failed. Make sure the user name and password you entered are correct, then click Continue. If the information isn’t correct, you cannot receive messages."

I tried now for two hours - incl. repairing permissions, deleting all imap and smtp entries in Keychain Access, restarting Mail, restarting the Mac. All without success. I even tried to add my own Gmail account to her Mail application - does not work. I added her Gmail account to my Mail application - no problem.

Does anybody have an idea how to make this work?

 

[BrianBaughn]

It ought to work...if you don't have two-factor authentication turned on with your Google account.

Are you saying you're not even getting past the account creation process?

What happens if you create a new User Account on her Mac and add the new account?

 

[desertman]

I finally found the solution. I had to allow "less secure apps" access to the account (https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en). Never heard about this before and found it only with my 10th (or so) search at Google. What makes this especially bizarre is the fact that I had added the other Gmail account only a couple of months earlier without having to do this. Now there is one Gmail account on the computer that has this option disabled and one that has it enabled. Isn't that weird?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Great that you found that. I didn't know that specifically Google considered Mail in OS 10.7.5 "less secure".

Google added that security last year for standard Gmail accounts that don't have two-factor authentication turned on and it affects several older systems, devices and applications.

 

[Significant1]

Does her machine not support newer OSX? since 10.7.5 is no longer a supported version..