Outlook 2013 keeps asking for Office365 password

Question

Here is my problem: I have Outlook 2013 (with SP1) on a Windows 8.1. I configured a [email protected] Office365 account on it and it works—mails are sent and received and the status shown is Connected to Exchange. The problem is that every few minutes I get a Windows Security prompt that asks for the Exchange’s account password (something like in the picture below). I doesn’t matter if I insert the password or not or if I thick Remember my credentials, it keeps showing on. The only way to make it go away is to click Cancel.

How can I fix this?

I already tried clearing the account from Windows’ credentials manager and deleting the Outlook account, but to no avail. And the account is set with Logon network security set to Anonymous authentication.

Answer 1

There are quite literally a dozen reasons this can happen. Two pretty common things to check are:

1. Make sure your office installation is fully updated.
2. When Outlook is running check it's connections. In your task bar notification area find the outlook icon CTRL+Right Click and select "Connection Status". Verify all your connections are pointing to O365 and not a previous/legacy Exchange server (look at server names - they should all be outlook.office365.com). If you are showing legacy connections (anything not O365) your organization may have issues with how they have configured Auto Discover. I recommend manually configuring your client and notify your Admins (if you are the admin - review all your DNS settings).

To Manually configure your connection you search for that phrase directly and you'll get good results. The current TechNet Link https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Add-a-POP-IMAP-or-Office-365-account-to-Outlook-using-custom-settings-70c2b230-9d23-4c41-98c5-a639e68e06dc?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

3. Other things to look for are if you are connecting to other calendars (Exchange or SharePoint). Try removing those and see if the issue persists - if it goes away, try re-adding them one at a time It may be they just needed to be re-added after some action occurred, or it maybe permissions have changed on one of those items.

4. MS has a desktop tool you can download from your O365 account under tools - however if you are running Office 2013 it will report that you don't need to run it. They have a new tool available for troubleshooting Outlook issues that you can download and run from here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073666

Answer 2

For me it was that the organisation has turned on two factor authentication. Log in to your account from portal.office.com.

Click on your account at the top right corner -> "View account" -> "Security & privacy" -> "Additional security verification" -> Click on "Update your phone numbers used for account security.".

At the new screen you should have two tabs, "Additional security verification" and "app passwords". Click on app passwords and create a new one.

With this new password created I could log in to office 365 from Outlook 2013/2016.

From the "app passwords"-tab:

"To sign into Outlook, Lync or other apps installed on your computer or smart phone, you’ll need to create an app password. When prompted by the app, enter the app password instead of your work or school account password.

You can use the same app password with multiple apps or create a new app password for each app."

Answer 3

In the registry keys below, please change version 14 to 15 or 16 (2010, 2013 or 2016).

Assumes you know how to convert to a .reg file, if not please google it.

The cause was the in-house exchange server is being auto-discovered. Needs this to remove it from Client's machine.

Username for the Pop-up window is [email protected]

One last thing is there is a restart of Outlook involved, I will let you figure out.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover]

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover\RedirectServers]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover\RedirectServers]
"autodiscover-s.outlook.com"=hex(0):

Code edited by Stephen into Registry format! Thanks Stephen!!