Microsoft Outlook Gmail Password Issue
 

Dear Friends,

I use Microsoft Office for my email on my laptop. It is connected to my gmail account.

For the past few days, it has not been working. The screen pops up asking for my name and password for my pop gmail.com. I put in the information and it still does not work.

I have then tried changing my password for gmail. It will work fine on my ipad and iphone but still not on my laptop.

When I go into Outlook account settings to update password, the same pop gmail screen comes up. I then get the following message "Something went wrong and Outlook couldn't update your password. Please verify your password and try again. If the problem continues, contact your email administrator."

Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue?

Thanks in advance.

William

Googling "Something went wrong and Outlook couldn't update your password. Please verify your password and try again. If the problem continues, contact your email administrator." yielded this:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...e-6c6cae8b96c2

Relevant snippet:

Yes, I googled when I first had the issue and found that solution. But it did nothing to resolve the issue.

In addition, when I go into my Google account, it tells me this feature is no longer available:

Less secure app access

Your account is vulnerable because you allow apps and devices that use less secure sign-in technology to access your account. To keep your account secure, Google will automatically turn this setting OFF if it’s not being used.https://www.gstatic.com/identity/boq...42d953fa32.pngThis setting is no longer available. Learn more

Did you try using an app password?

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833

No, my app access is fine. It is my laptop with Microsoft Office Outlook that is not working.

This describes setting up 2fa and using an app password WITHIN OUTLOOK as a workaround to the change made on the Google side that sounds like it is causing OP's original issue.

Yes, you need to create an app password in Google and use that in Outlook instead of your actual password.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Just hit a relative of this a couple of days ago. Solution:

1) Turn on two-factor authentication.

2) Create an application password for your e-mail client. You use this just like a password, although it's meant to be set in a program and forgotten, it's not something you need to remember. It's actually just a secondary password for your account, 16 random alphanumeric characters.

Effectively, they took a sledgehammer to ensuring that your password can't be brute-forced and greatly reduced the exposure surface for other attacks on it. I have no idea why they require two-factor to be turned on in order to use it, perhaps this is just a carrot-and-stick to get you to turn on two-factor.

Note that the less-secure-applications switch is old information, no longer useful.

In theory this change was rolled out 6/1, but it appears to be a roll-out, not everyone got hit at once.

I've had similar with gMail when I'm using a new or even less-frequently used location to pull emails to my laptop. At home, over WiFi, pulling emails from multiple gMail accounts into my laptop is w/o issue. But, if I go to a "new" location to log in, I get a similar message in Outlook. I have to go to gMail on the web, login and go through the security rigamarole of gMail detected a suspicious login... and confirm it was me. Next Sned/Receive in Outlook, it works.

My solution has been to abandon POP for IMAP on Gmail.

That appears to cause my Gmail to appear in the Inbox for my Gmail address instead of consolidating to a single Inbox...so I created a rule that sends everything that appears in the Gmail Inbox immediately into the consolidated Inbox.

So far, that's working.

IMAP is the more modern protocol anyway. POP is a holdover from the 80s...maybe earlier.

Bit late now but Gmail has disabled the less-secure app function as of 31 May so any old stuff (such as Windows Live Mail that I still use) won't work with Gmail.

Interesting. I have always had a Gmail gadget on my desktop to count unread emails and let me know w/o opening the Gmail website that I had emails. About 10 days ago it just stopped working returning a " Error:401" I tried downloading several other Gmail counter gadgets all with the same results. Now I know why.... the end of an era.