Outlook Keeps Prompting For Password

prompt

Working with Outlook is not always easy and the users at times might face some issues. One such issue, which the Outlook users mostly experience, is the continuous prompt for password when a user tries to connect to Outlook.


In this blog, we will focus on this very issue and the workarounds to troubleshoot this issue.

Scenarios & Cause

There are mainly two scenarios when Outlook may keep on prompting for password. The scenarios and their causes are:

  • When the password of the domain user account gets changed, MS Outlook 2010 and 2013 versions, prompt for the password again and again. When the user enters the new password once and selects the option Remember my credentials option, Outlook does not prompt for the password for that session. However, when the user logs off and starts Outlook later on, it again prompts for the password.

Cause: This can happen in the scenario when the stored credentials do not get overwritten when the authentication prompt is triggered by Outlook even if the Remember my credentials option has been enabled by the user.

  • Another scenario, when Outlook prompts for a password repeatedly is when the user tries to connect with Office 365. In case the user cancels the credentials prompt, he may encounter the following error:

The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action.”

Cause: The main reason behind this scenario is when the Logon network security setting in the Security tab of MS Exchange is set to a different value other than Anonymous Authentication.

Workaround to Avoid Repetitive Password Prompt

The possible workarounds to avoid the continuous password prompt from Outlook are:

For Scenario 1

For Scenario 2

For fixing this issue, the Logon network security settings should be changed to Anonymous Authentication. For this, follow the below-mentioned steps:

Upshot

With the help of the methods discussed in this blog, we believe that you will be able to avoid the repetitive password prompt from Outlook.