Does Outlook Continuously Prompt for Credentials When You Try to Connect to Office 365?
Recently, one of our clients encountered an issue on their (Dell) laptop where her Microsoft Outlook (desktop application) would only properly connect if she was physically in the office and on the company network.
If she wanted to connect to Outlook at a coffee shop or home office, the following security message would appear requesting her to enter her password.
It’s important to mention that in this particular scenario, she was able to access my Office 365 mailbox from the web app, but like many users, she prefers to use the desktop application.
Like many users before her who have experienced a similar issue, she thought it was asking for her email password. When it continued to prompt her to enter a password, she tried resetting her password, clearing her cache and even removed and reinstalled the application but nothing seemed to work.
As it turned out, her organization had recently transitioned to Office 365 Multi-Factor Authentication. MFA is used to increase data security and if you have done any type of online banking or social media in the past few years, you’re already accustomed to it.
In our clients case, Office 365 was looking for a new ‘App Password’ which needs to be generated for that particular application.
Once she entered the app password, her issue of not being able to connect to Outlook from remote locations was resolved.
If you are encountering a similar issue, follow these simple instructions on how to create an ‘App Password’ for Office 365.
How to Create an ‘App Password’ for Office 365 Applications
The first thing you’ll want to do is login to your Office 365 account, which can be accomplished by clicking here.
Once logged in, navigate to My Accounts>Security & Privacy, which can be found here.
From there, you’ll want to select “Create and manage app passwords.”
Click the Create button, type in a name (for reference) and a password will automatically populate.
Copy that password and paste it into the application you are trying to connect to, and you should be able to connect to Outlook.
Please note that you will only need to perform these steps once. Also note that some users have reported issues copying this password, so we recommend copying this into Notepad before proceeding.
