in message
Well, I just tried it one more time using Gmail's step by step
instructions
for Outlook 2003. The answer to your questions was yes. And, I put
in
[email protected]" in the UserName field. I chose POP3.
Now, the same frustration message is coming back stating "Enter
network
password", and then shows me the username and password for Gmail as
I had
entered them. Outlook refuses to accept this and keeps asking for
the
Network password. Then I get the final error message which says
that Gmail
does not recognize my Username and Password. These are the ones i
have used
for months, and they still work on Gmail.
Um, how does a "Yes" reply answer my question "Do you use dial-up or
have an always-on connection (i.e., cable or DSL)?".
Does "I chose POP3" (since the prior statement is about setting up an
e-mail account in Outlook) mean you chose to define a POP3 account in
Outlook or that you enabled the server-side POP3 option in your Gmail
account?
Does "Yes" mean that you read the KB article and did the actions
described therein to clear your password cache and then reenter the
login credentials in Outlook (and select to remember them) so they got
cached again? A shorcut to that article is to wait for the prompt,
erase the password field in it, make sure the option to "remember" is
enabled, and try again. If that doesn't work, you'll have to follow
method #3 in the KB article to flush the cached password from the
registry.
In the e-mail account defined in Outlook, did you check that the
option to "remember password" is enabled? Check if the "remember"
option is enabled in the e-mail account defined in Outlook. Click OK
to ensure you save that change. Exit Outlook and reload it. Then go
into the e-mail account's properties to check if that the option
remained enabled (i.e., check that it stuck).
Is the .pst file (message store) for Outlook on a local hard drive or
did you put it on a networked drive?
Have you tried using the exact SAME username *and* password using
their webmail interface to your e-mail account? This is to ensure
that you have the correct login credentials that you use for both the
webmail interface as in your local e-mail client. Often the username
is case-insensitive but often the password *is* case sensitive.
POP3 has a very limited set of error codes: +OK or +ERR. If there is
any server-side error, presumably they add a comment which your e-mail
client should show but they aren't required to include a comment
field. If the e-mail client gets +ERR when trying to connect, it (and
you) really haven't a clue why the server couldn't establish a mail
session or refused to do so. Logging on using the webmail interface
makes sure that your account is valid and enabled versus being, say,
suspended or killed. When Outlook gets an +ERR when attempting to
login, and since it is the same +ERR code for all POP3 errors, it
hasn't a clue as to what is the real error, so it figures that the
login failed due to bad login credentials and tries to connect again
and why you see the login prompt again. You will need to enable the
troubleshooting logging in Outlook and check the log file
(%temp%\opm.log) to see when the error occurred that was returned by
the server to Outlook. If their POP3 interface is screwed up, Outlook
will continue to get the +ERR status (if it manages to connect to the
mail host but fails during the establishment of a mail session). You
might have to wait a day, or two, before they fix it. Gmail is a
crappy e-mail service. That you are using the same login credentials
as before does not preclude Gmail's server from having its own
problems which results in a failed handshake to establish a mail
session with your e-mail client. Outlook sees an +ERR status but that
tells it nothing about why the server cannot establish a mail session,
so OE guesses. With umpteen different possible reasons why the server
failed the handshake, a single guess probably won't be accurate.
Other e-mail clients may simply report an error during the mail
session handshake so you know the mail server won't accept your
connection - but you still won't know why (unless the mail server adds
a comment which might only show up in the logfile).
If you have anything that intercepts your mail traffic, try disabling
it. That would include anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-malware, or
other security products. It could be they are not properly configured
to allow connecting to the mail host since they must intercept your
mail traffic to do whatever security hardening function that they
provide.
Some other articles:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA101513541033.aspx
And then there is the fact that you are using Gmail which has received
almost no resources for fixing problems with it since it got released
and so it is still in *beta* status. Their emulated POP3 interface
has problems but which many users won't experience (but those running
mail monitors will notice e-mails showing up in them will not be found
when later polled using a normal e-mail client). Their emulated POP3
interface can also get out of sync with their webmail interface. Use
their webmail interface to empty out your mailbox (Inbox) by deleting
any messages listed there or by moving them to another [server-side
defined] folder. With an empty Inbox, and after logging out of their
webmail interface, see if Outlook then works to poll your account.
With a corrupted e-mail item in your mailbox or when it gets out of
sync between the POP3 and webmail interfaces, you might have problems
connecting to your Gmail account. Flush out the Inbox using their
webmail interface.
There is another possibility but it occurs only rarely. Gmail and
Yahoo might periodically require that a user answer an intervening
security web page during the login. You will only see this security
page when using their webmail interface. When you login using their
webmail interface, and to ensure a human is still using the account,
they may present an intervening web page that requires you to enter a
series of characters that are depicted in a graphic image. Once you
enter the correct characters and complete the login, you can logout of
their webmail interface and your local e-mail client will begin
working again. I've hit this before with Gmail during my trial of it.
I've hit it with Yahoo's freebie mail service (I use YahooPOPs to
connect to it which can indicate when this happens but can't do
anything about it until *I* use the webmail interface to answer the
intervening security prompt). Once they insert the security prompt
during the login, you won't be able to use their POP3, IMAP, or
webmail interfaces until you answer it correctly. I think I saw this
about twice with Gmail over a year, or more, of use and about 4 times
with Yahoo over several years (discounting one time when it occurred
that it happened 4 times within the same week but then disappeared for
several months).
