The endless password prompt that comes back no matter how many times you type it correctly is one of Outlook’s oldest tricks. It’s rarely your actual password – it’s usually a stale credential cached somewhere on the machine.
Work through these in order
- Confirm the password itself. Sign in at portal.office.com in a browser. If that fails too, it’s the password (or MFA), not Outlook – reset it there first.
- Clear cached credentials. Close Outlook. Press Start, type Credential Manager, open Windows Credentials, and remove every entry mentioning Outlook, Office, or MicrosoftOffice. Reopen Outlook and sign in fresh – this fixes most cases.
- Recently changed your password? Your phone or a second PC still using the old one will keep triggering lockouts and prompts. Update it everywhere.
- Rebuild the profile. If prompts persist: Control Panel > Mail > Show Profiles > Add, create a new profile and set it as default. Your mail is on the server, so nothing is lost – Outlook just re-downloads it.
When to hand it to us
If a new profile still prompts, the cause is usually server-side: an authentication policy, a licensing hiccup, or MFA in a bad state. That’s a ten-minute fix from our end – raise a ticket or start a remote session and we’ll sort it while you watch.