Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Exchange Account Keeps Deleting

G

gthorson

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 12, 2015
73
12
Southern California
I upgraded to Mojave today on my 2016 15" MacBook Pro.

I'm trying to use Apple Mail with Duo authentication. It works perfectly with my Mac Mini, but with the MacBook Pro, it deletes the Exchange account repeatedly within minutes after successfully authenticating.

Any advice?
 
I am having the exact problem tonight. I was on the phone with support. They have me added that same exchange account under a different user account on the computer. The exchange account stayed in the different user account, so they are going to call me back tomorrow to find a solution. They suspected the mail preference plist is corrupted.
 
konoyei said:
I am having the exact problem tonight. I was on the phone with support. They have me added that same exchange account under a different user account on the computer. The exchange account stayed in the different user account, so they are going to call me back tomorrow to find a solution. They suspected the mail preference plist is corrupted.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing. Did they call you back?
 
gthorson said:
Thanks for sharing. Did they call you back?
Click to expand...
They did. Long story short, they are still investigating.

We tested couple things:
  1. Adding exchange account without checking mail to sync (Only syncing calendar, notes and reminders). Account disappeared just like in Mail.
  2. We removed the V6 folder in Mail under Library to another location and restart the computer. After rebooting and starting Mail, the app rebuild the database and the exchange account stays on but it is not pulling any new mail (confirmed with a test email sent through and able to sync using iOS as well as the Outlook app on the computer but not the Mail app).
So basically they don't know what's going on, they capture some data from my computer and their engineer gonna look into it. If you only have problem keeping the account on, try the V6 folder trick and see if it helps, but if it also doesn't pull in any new mail, then I am not sure.
 
I had this exact problem with multiple exchange accounts, believe it or not spending a day reloading from Mojave fresh was the quickest way to solve it for me.

It was a gamble but I had it in mind I wanted to reload anyway, and didn't think anyone at apple would be able to help this early on into Mojave, so two birds one stone and all that :)
 
petterihiisila said:
If you don't mind, please keep this thread up to date if you learn more from Apple. I can retain the Exchange account by having iCloud Keychain off, but that's not a great long term solution.
Click to expand...
Still no update from Apple, but the syncing issue seems to fix itself (have been working fine for couple days). So I am guessing rebuilding the database (deleting the V6 folder) did the trick.
 
We have multiple macs running mac mail in our environment. Just came across this same exact issue with one of our MacBook Pros. New mail was not flowing as well as other issues so we decided to rebuild the mail box as a last resort. After entering credentials the Exchange account deletes itself after about 20 seconds. I tried deleting the V6 folder however the account was still deleting itself. Disabling the icloud keychain is the only thing that allowed the mailbox to remain intact. Hopefully there will be a fix soon.
 
I think I solved it...

I went into Keychain -> iCloud and deleted anything that was related to exchange. Then I disabled iCloud Keychain and in Keychain waited for the icloud icon to disappear and the 'local' folder to appear... then I searched again for anything that was related to Exchange and deleted even that.

I then added the Exchange account and waited for everything to sync... and waited 10 min to ensure it would not disappear as before.

At this point I then re-enabled iCloud Keychain and that seemed to work... Exchange account still present :)

UPDATE: Nope, I still have the problem... I had to disable iCloud Keychain to get it to work.
 
Last edited:
gthorson said:
I upgraded to Mojave today on my 2016 15" MacBook Pro.

I'm trying to use Apple Mail with Duo authentication. It works perfectly with my Mac Mini, but with the MacBook Pro, it deletes the Exchange account repeatedly within minutes after successfully authenticating.

Any advice?
Click to expand...

I am also having this problem. Anyone ever find a long-termsolution/fix?
 
Also having this problem. Everything was fine when I first setup my MBP two weeks ago. I reinstalled Mojave tonight, and now I'm having this problem.
 
I had same issue. Trick with disabling keychain synch helped, however Mojave mail client was not able to finish Download mail from the Exchange/Office 365 server. I had to switch to native Outlook. Which is not best choice from energy and search perspective....
 
gthorson said:
I upgraded to Mojave today on my 2016 15" MacBook Pro.

I'm trying to use Apple Mail with Duo authentication. It works perfectly with my Mac Mini, but with the MacBook Pro, it deletes the Exchange account repeatedly within minutes after successfully authenticating.

Any advice?
Click to expand...

I had the same issue when my company activated MFA on my Office 365 account.

I was able to fix it by setting up the exchange account manually instead of letting MacOS/Exchange find the mail settings with auto feature when typing in the email address.
 
eyeQ said:
I had the same issue when my company activated MFA on my Office 365 account.

I was able to fix it by setting up the exchange account manually instead of letting MacOS/Exchange find the mail settings with auto feature when typing in the email address.
Click to expand...

"Configure Manually" worked for me as well. Wanted to add that if MFA is enabled, i had to use an "app password" instead of the account password. For office 365 needed to use https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx for both URLS, too.
 
gthorson said:
I upgraded to Mojave today on my 2016 15" MacBook Pro.

I'm trying to use Apple Mail with Duo authentication. It works perfectly with my Mac Mini, but with the MacBook Pro, it deletes the Exchange account repeatedly within minutes after successfully authenticating.

Any advice?
Click to expand...

Hey! Been fiddling with this. I have 2 exchange accounts that kept disappearing moments after adding them, and only my Exchange accounts (iCloud, Gmail, non-specific IMAP all remained). Tried restarting, deleting the V6 folders in the user Library, and reinstalling macOS Mojave. None worked. I then turned to Keychain Access after reading some success elsewhere on the Apple forums. Here is what I did and it has worked since. (Attaching screenshot of Keychain Access as well)
  • Open Keychain Access (spotlight search is fastest)
  • On the left-hand side, chose All Items
  • In the Keychain Access search bar in the upper right, search for exchange
  • In the results below, select all items that have com.apple.account.Exchange.oath-### and Delete them
  • Quit Keychain Access and go Preferences --> Internet Accounts and re-add the Exchange accounts
This has worked for me, and all 100,000+ emails have re-synced without the account vanishing. Hope it works for you!
 

Attachments

  • Keychain Access.png
    Keychain Access.png
    1.1 MB · Views: 946
  • Like
Reactions: luki94
I tried the deletion of those keys and then added the account back (mine is an office 365 account) but the account vanished within a couple of minutes. The only way I have read to allow it to partially work is to uncheck the contacts, which hampers the account and is not preferred.
[doublepost=1546966510][/doublepost]I tested one option, after adding the account but unchecking the Contacts, I then opened Contacts and removed an entry with the same name, and enabled the contacts from within the Contacts preferences, and so far, the whole account has not been removed.

I'll report back tomorrow to see if it lasts that long.
 
hasselboxster said:
"Configure Manually" worked for me as well. Wanted to add that if MFA is enabled, i had to use an "app password" instead of the account password. For office 365 needed to use https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx for both URLS, too.
Click to expand...

I have the same problem and am trying to configure my Exchange account manually.
However, I can't get past the login screen. It's asking me for a password, but I have 2FA enabled (via Duo) so there is no password as such. How did you get past this screen?

If I let it configure automatically, I get a popup to use my 2FA. But configuring manually I can never get that far.

Thanks

Scott
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2019-01-26 at 09.19.27.png
    Screenshot 2019-01-26 at 09.19.27.png
    543.2 KB · Views: 416
I wanted to give an update on my progress with this issue.
I have found a way to get it to work following the advice from Rceleca.
I removed my Exchange account from "Internet Accounts" and also removed everything from the V6 folder in Mail.
I then removed any entries in KeyChain that mention Exchange.
Next I re-added my Exchange Account, using the "Automatically find settings" option, but only selected "Mail" and "Calendar" as items to sync.
Shortly after doing this I was asked to re-authenticate my Exchange details on both my iPad and iPhone (presumably because I'd just deleted their KeyChain details from iCloud).

It took three days! But all of my Mail has now synced, and (so far) I've not had Exchange disappear from my Mac. (It's been over a week now, which is as long as it's ever worked for).

For reference, I've attached a screenshot of my entire KeyChain entry that mentions "Exchange".
There are three sets of Exchange oAuth keys, one for my Mac, one for my iPhone, and one for my iPad.

I hope this helps anyone else with the same problem.
I've not yet re-enabled contacts, as from this thread it would appear that can cause it to barf. I'd much rather live without contacts than live without iCloud Keychain.

Good luck all!
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2019-02-07 at 16.16.59.png
    Screenshot 2019-02-07 at 16.16.59.png
    72.5 KB · Views: 336
willgreene99 said:
So far it is continuing to work, for me at least. Hope this works for others as well.
Click to expand...


I had this problem too and finally managed to fix it. Like others the Exchange account would mysteriously auto-delete after a few minutes of being created. This only happened when iCloud Keychain syncing was ON AND Calendar syncing with Exchange was on.

I tried lots and lots and lots of things including trashing half my Library folder! Tore my hair out. This is what finally seemed to work:

0) turned Keychain syncing off on the Mac in question

1) deleted/reset my login keychain and all files in Library/Keychain

2) deleted everything I could in my System Keychain (except for airport passwords).

3) deleted every 'certificate' I could in my System Keychain on all my Macs.

I think it might have been the last thing that did it, but when I turned keychain syncing back on, the problem went away,

My conclusion was I had some sort of poisonous certificate in my keychain.

Phew!
 
Dammit! I spoke too soon. My Exchange account just bombed again. It was working for over two weeks, but I'm back to square one. Grrrrr.

So I'd say we're back to disabling iCloud Keychain as the only known "permanent" fix.
I'm going to keep digging on this as I don't want to give up yet, but ultimately I fear we're just all waiting for a software update to fix this issue for good. :-(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back