Latest updates for older Macbook Air (Montery) and Macbook Pro (Big Sur) are both causing problems with Hotmail accounts

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Latest updates for older Macbook Air (Montery) and Macbook Pro (Big Sur) are both causing problems with Hotmail accounts

I have two older Macbook laptops as indicated in the title, and the latest updates (a month or so ago) to both are suddenly causing sign-in problems with my Hotmail accounts - all of them! It shows the lightning bolt after each account, which when I click sometimes goes ahead and connects the account to Mail, but most of the time asks me for the password, which it rejects each time.

I recently came across a community post that suggested changing the host name from its previous iteration (which I, unfortunately, can't remember cos I have already changed it to a newer one on both laptops) to outlook.office365.com.

This host name change *sorta* helps, ie it doesn't happen as often but it is still happening every day multiple times a day.

I would really like to get a fix for this. It's possible that it's an ongoing problem due to newer tech, and my older devices, and may just be an unfortunate incompatibility that cannot be fixed.

If you have any insight, please let me know!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Jun 28, 2024 4:41 PM

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Answer 1

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MsLilithe Author

Level 1

16 points

Jul 2, 2024 12:40 PM in response to ishrugged

Thank you for your response, ishrugged! The irony is that literally the day after I posted this, Microsoft sent me an email with the information in the article you shared. Thus far, I have deleted and reloaded two of my email accounts with them and so far so good. I did one at a time to see if that would fix it, and still have one more to do. The two I've done seem to be holding.

If for some reason they revert back to not working, I will try your other suggestion - I never even considered that it could be done that way!

I find it odd that Microsoft is only just coming around to getting that info out, as it has been *weeks* of this problem, but better late than never I always say (in my best NYC accent).

I considered taking this post down but will keep it up in case anybody else runs into the same problem and hasn' been made aware of the security changes in Microsoft's mail.

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Answer 2

ishrugged

Level 2

461 points

Jun 30, 2024 4:21 PM in response to MsLilithe

If I'm understanding this correctly–Hotmail in the Apple Mail client is frequently shown as offline. When trying to get it online, a dialog box asks for credentials. Even after entering the correct credentials, a message states they can't be verified.

Likely related in some fashion to this Microsoft article. They recommend setting up as an Outlook account.

If that's the case, something that's worked for a few weeks for someone who had this problem on two different boxes–we removed the account then added the Hotmail account as an Exchange account (Apple instructions linked below). I'm told that a bonus gained by setting up this way was that a duplicate email was no longer found in the Sent folder. Also, the owner's iOS devices were unaffected by the Mac change. They're set up as Outlook accounts. On the Mac, we first tried adding the Hotmail account as an Outlook account. The results were intermittently unsatisfactory.

Remove email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

Add email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

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