Outlook won't remember my e-mail password. Help. Please.

New computer (~2 months old) running Microsoft Outlook with MS Windows XP, connected to a router to a cable modem. I’ve gotten Outlook up and running no problem, no complaints – save one: I can’t get the thing to remember my e-mail account’s password.

Every time I plunk my HP Palm Pilot into the cradle, it syncs up for the calendar, my contacts, etc. but it won’t download my e-mail because of the password thing. Every time I fire up Outlook, I have to reinput my password, and I click the little “Remember my password” box.

I’m stuck. Any clues?

Tripler
“I’ve got mail!” . . . Oh, no I don’t. :rolleyes:

Where do you check the “remember password” option?
Do you do it when the send/receive window pops up and it asks you to enter the password?

In that case the solution should be easy:

go to Tools -> Email accounts

There you go where you can change your accounts settings, here you have to check the remember my passwort option as well, otherwise Outlook always “forgets” the password again.

Let me know if that works.

This KB article sounds like it pertains to your problem. The Windows 2000 instructions should work on XP, though you’ll have to right-click on Protected Storage System Provider and hit Permissions instead of going to the Security menu as it describes. Be sure to back up the registry before attempting this fix. It’s possible to seriously screw up your system.

If you have more than one mail account, this article may apply.

Number, I thank you.

I’ve finally followed up on this. . . to no avail. I changed my registry, and am still having to input my password. Granted XP is different than 2000, I still got reasonably close to the procedure as I could get (i.e. the popup wordings were the same).

Help me out. How do I find out which Service Release I have so I can download an update (Help, About doesn’t seem to tell me much). . .

Tripler
Password: **********

Office Update will detect exactly which updates you need, assuming you’re using Office 2000 or XP.

If they don’t help you may have to blow away your Outlook user profile and create a new one. Be sure to record all your settings first.

This is possibly advice similar to Number’s; my comments come only from my experience and not from any skill or technical training. We had the same problem with Win95 when we still had dial-up [because we now have ADSL, the problem isn’t there].

It was because we’d inadvertently created more than one ‘identity’, so we had to ‘start/shut-down/close-all-programs-and-log-on-as-a-different-user’. Had to do this each time we rebooted, otherwise we’d have to type in the password each and every time we wanted to get mail or surf. Fortunately, we didn’t have to enter a password, though I imagine that might be necessary in some cases.

Realize you have a newer Windows, but it may have similarities.

  1. Update to Office XP Service Pack 2 from the Office Update site or from OFFXP: How to Obtain the Latest Office XP Service Pack

If that doesn’t fix it, here’s a Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Password Settings Are Not Retained and a Blank Password Is Cached in Outlook

Small hijack:

Using WinXP home, DUN remembers my password “" as "************”

I uncheck “Remember”, enter it properly, no worries. When I ask it to remember, I get this huge string of “**************”'s…

WTF?

This is normal behavior for WinXP. It obscures the number of characters in your password to make it harder to guess. It still stores whatever you typed, regardless of the number of asterisks.

:smack: