MKRD.info - Thorough articles on a variety of topics, and no ads!

Outlook or Live Mail do not connect after password change

Symptoms:

• You have changed the password to Hotmail.com, mail.live.com, or Outlook.com online (thru the webpage). Now, you can no longer access your e-mail thru Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail. These programs cannot connect. When you supply the new password to these programs, you get an error, there is still no connection, and e-mail does not update. 
• You have tried to supply the new password to these programs, but no matter what you do, it seems to revert to the old password. Note: I am relying on the number of asterisk characters shown in the field to rely on this. If your new password is the same length (number of characters) as the old one, then this does not apply.
• You have tried to check and un-check "Remember this password" without any effect.
• You have tried your new password online (thru web interface of e-mail). Password works fine online, but does not seem to change in the e-mail reader / client software.

Stop trying! Your new password is fine. The problem is that it cannot be used as-is in the e-mail client. This is because you have two-factor authentication turned ON. Because of two-factor authentication, you MUST obtain an app password instead for use with such programs.

After changing your password you may need to generate another app password. You will need to do the following:

In Outlook.com, for example, in the top right corner of the website there is your name and/or picture. Click on your name. A menu will slide down.

Go to "Account settings". Note that a new tab / window will open with this website: https://account.microsoft.com/

You may need to enter your password to access this sensitive website area. By the way, if you are not a dumb user, you will not trust a link just because I gave it to you. Right? Clicking on random links in e-mail or websites (including mine!) that immediately ask for your password should cause to verify the link. To verify, make sure that the address bar shows some kind of "Verified by" information and / or you can Google the website you need and rely on the first few non-advertising search results to verify link is correct (although you cannot trust even that sometimes). Use the stuff between your two ears!

A blue horizontal menu (this may change in the future) of this website will say Account on the left. Somewhere to the right there will be a tab called "Security & privacy". Click on that.

On this page, there will be a section called Account security. In that section should be a link called "More security settings". Click on that.

Somewhere towards the bottom of that page there will be a section "App passwords". Click on "Create a new app password". A password that will be a random combination of characters, usually same length as the password you have specified online (your typed, new password you are trying to get working in an e-mail client) will be generated.

Go back to your Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail and use the generated app password instead of the "new" password you have chosen.

After you have re-entered the password (this may have to be done a few times while you get all accounts updated, etc.), your e-mail clients should start working.

Note that exact external website names / places / colors / designs mentioned in this article may change with time.

BY THE WAY, while you are on that page, don't be an average dumb computer user, and verify/change/setup your security information. Modern websites and platforms, including Hotmail / Outlook provide the following security, authorization, recovery, backup, and access restriction options that you should research and utilize:

• Two-factor authentication.
• Security / secret questions. Review / update these! These are one of the stupidest concepts in security, as few people remember correct replies to questions they have set up a long time ago (if they never wrote this information down, of course!).
• Recovery code
• Text / call passcode sent to you whenever a login from a new computer is detected.
• Geographical login restrictions (for example, block Chinese logins if you are not located in China, and so on)
• Notifications on new logins. You are dumb enough to think you are the only one who tries to login to your e-mail??? Go to the Recent activity page to see international log-in attempts to hack your e-mail account!
• Notifications on unsuccessful login attempts.
• Recovery (backup / secondary) e-mail accounts.
• Trusted Devices
• and so on...

˅˅˅ Additional valuable information is available at one of the links below: ˅˅˅