For some users, after the recent updates, Outlook won’t remember the password for your email account. It may show up as an error saying it cannot connect to the server or it may keep asking for the password every time Outlook connects with the server, which is often if you are using IMAP accounts and are always online.
The most likely cause is an update that has caused some conflicts with Outlook and the other apps remembering the password. There has not been a direct solution to the problem but you can solve it with a workaround, which is very simple and quick.
Outlook Won’t Remember Password
As suggested by others in the online forums, the problem is with certain events scheduled in the Windows Task Schedule. It’s a feature that is used to automatically start a program or close a program when the right conditions are met. Such as, automatically check for updates every week, or start a program when computer is logged in, etc. If you are using an HP computer, HP Customer participation utility task is also added in the Task Scheduler, which causes some issues with the apps like Outlook remembering the password. But it can also be due to other similar tasks scheduled.
In short, some events/tasks messes up the default Windows credential manager that stores all the login passwords, including that of Outlook.
The simple solution is to turn these off or disable them.
- To do that, go to Task Scheduler. Press ‘Start’ on your PC and type in “Task Scheduler” and open it.
- You can also go to Control Panel > System and Security > Task Scheduler
- Inside the Task Scheduler, you will find all kinds of task automatically added by Windows or by you manually. On the left, you can navigate the library corresponding to different tasks. Here, look for a task related to HP customer participation.
- You can also click on the “Task Scheduler (local” on the left pane, which is like the home page for the program and then scroll below to find “Active Tasks.”
- Expand the “Active Tasks” section to see all the tasks that are currently active and have not expired. Scroll through them to find the HP related one that we want to disable.
- Then right click on it and click ‘Disable.’
However, HP customer participation is not the only conflicting task in the scheduler that messes up the login credentials in Windows Outlook. There can be others as well. Do not look for any unknown tasks and disable them, as it might affect the functioning of Windows in unexpected ways.
To find tasks in the scheduler might be causing the password issue, follow the steps below:
- Open the Windows PowerShell (admin). (Go to Start and type in PowerShell and then open it)
- Paste the following command and press enter:
Get-ScheduledTask | foreach { If (([xml](Export-ScheduledTask -TaskName $_.TaskName -TaskPath $_.TaskPath)).GetElementsByTagName(“LogonType”).’#text’ -eq “S4U”) { $_.TaskName } } - If there are any tasks listed after pressing enter, those are the ones you need to disable in the task scheduler. So, make a note of all the tasks listed here (if any), then follow the steps outlined above to disable them in Task Scheduler.
However, this is a recent issue likely caused by the Windows Update. There can also be other reasons for the same problem. For example, if your settings, it might be that you have turned on “prompt for credentials” option, which you need to disable. The details of all other causes for the password issue are outside the scope of this article, but we will dive in them later in some other article.
We hope the above tip works in solving the issue of Outlook (and other apps) not remembering the password for login.