Cannot Send Mail - the username or password incorrect - help please?

cknest, If you go into Settings, Mail, and select the Yahoo account, go down to the Outgoing servers area, the iphone will allow you to switch the slider to "off" for the Yahoo SMTP server, but when you go back and look at it, that SMTP server is mysteriously "On" again....

We currently have Yahoo email as original Prodigy clients circa 1983. Have had original iphones since 12/07. Email has had few problems, most evident when Yahoo became ATT.

Suddenly yesterday, my wife's email stopped sending only on her iphone. One of the posters gave me the solution, which was to delete the account and to redo it through other, manually adding it. The clue offered was having the folders, which my wife's had that I didn't have. Hers added 2 characters to the password.

Additionally, I synced her iphone to get the latest OS for the original.
I feel badly that I lost the posting since when originally viewed, I wasn't signed in to my mac.com account to post.

Hope this helps, and thanks to the person with the idea. I hope they get back their folders.

I have had the exact same issue since yesterday afternoon. I can receive email but cannot send email. I am getting a message that either my user name or password are not correct. I have had my Yahoo email account set up on my iPhone since October 2009 with no issues. In addition I am also not getting any pictures on incoming mail - just little blue question marks where the picture should be. If I tap on a link like that it will open in Safari and I can see the picture.

I first called AT&T. We had an ice storm in the area yesterday and first they tried to tell me it was because of the storm.....but it started yesterday before the storm. In addition, if that was the issue I highly doubt that only outgoing mail would be effected!! Finally talking to a rep for a while she transferred me to Apple. I actually ending up speaking to someone who tried to help me. His suggestion was to delete the email account, shut the phone off, redraft and add the email account back. He also suggested I run the upgrades on my phone - haven't done any upgrades since I bought the phone.

I will contact Apple tomorrow and let them know that this appears to be a bigger issue than just me! If I find out anything I will post the info.

I just started having the same problem of not being able to send e-mails today. Went through a lot of resettings turning on and off, checking SMTP server, same exact message "can not send mail username or password incorrect. Spoke with AT&T support, unable to figure out, spoke with Apple, unable to help me as my support ability expired and in order to talk to their tech support I have to activate a one time fee of $29 - did not do it. Went back to AT&T hoping I could get another Tech support specialist more knowledgeable - transfered me to their Business Center Tech Support. I was told that there is a national power outage and they are receiving the same messages as we did. There is nothing they can do about it but to wait. Very frustrating.

I also called AT&T -- no help, but they gave me a number to call for "this kind of support issue". It was Apple (nice voice-activated help system), but no help there either - they said they were unaware of the problem (I guess they don't read their own discussions forum) - although they offered me the "Apple Support" contract.

It's probably not an Apple problem. I haven't changed a thing on my iPhone. It's probably either an AT&T network issue or a Yahoo issue or a (whoever manages their smtp server) issue.

We can expect to see lots of finger pointing and (maybe) an eventual "fix" by whoever broke things in the first place.... Grr....

In the meantime, you can probably use Safari to go directly to Yahoo mail (at mail.yahoo.com) and work pretty normally -- Thanks to the earlier message!

SOMEONE needs to step up, take responsibility, and FIX this problem!

Just to encourage all you fellow sufferers, I just received this from Yahoo mobile help:-

"Hello Mike,

I apologise for any inconvenience this has caused you. Please be assured
that we are aware of this problem, and we hope to have it fixed
promptly. I have added your details to our investigation. Your ticket
number is: 4301532.

We appreciate you reporting it to us, and thank you for your patience
and understanding.

Regards,

Sara
Yahoo! UK & Ireland Customer Care
"


Looks like they're on our case - hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Regards,

Mike

That's better news. Ironically, I spoke to BT Yahoo this morning and they didn't want to know, just said 'we don't support iPhone', end of conversation. I pointed out that it wasn't good enough, all the providers and networks have an obligation to work together for the benefit of their customers! Hopefully now this has been acknowledged, it will get sorted. And why has Apple set up this Support Forum and not read it? Hello? Is there anybody out there?

I am having the exact same issues. I spoke to AT&T and a very kind Apple representative this morning who informed me it's a problem with the Yahoo server. Apparently, the problem is being worked on. I hope they get it resolved soon!

Here is my report to this group... I also contacted AT&T-Yahoo and then Apple support about the issue. AT&T was pretty much clueless (although it is their AT&T-Yahoo server), Apple gave the same advice people on this forum already posted, namely delete Mail account and reset it using "Other". Apparently during this process correct outgoing mail server smtp.att.yahoo.com gets connected. If one adds account using "Yahoo! Mail" in the menu rather than "Other" then it is Yahoo! SMTP Server (no actual details of what it is) and apparently there are some problems with this one - whatever is behind this "Yahoo! SMTP Server" name.

After I reset all my accounts on iPhone and iPad using "Other", e-mail can be sent again. There are several very annoying things though: 1) not all folders come up, in my case I can only see inbox, trash and sent 2) and - this is extremely annoying and inconvenient - even inbox folders are NOT sync'ed with actual web account, i.e. if you delete some of your e-mails on the iPhone they will still be happily present when you open your account on thru the web (and vice versa). Does someone know by any chance how to fix that if possible at all?

I think we should all try to report the issue to the providers and Apple, this way it will be fixed sooner, and previous state of matters restored.

I am more than happy to throw my hat in the rink and report the problem if someone can help me with an email address or phone number to use. I have been unable to find any appropriate outlet.

I too would like to contact AT&T and yahoo, but don't know who to contact. I am experiencing the same as others that have posted. My issue started Tuesday. My husband's iphone 3g is fine. Interestingly, I registered his yahoo account on my phone and the same problem happened, but his account works fine on his phone. So is that a server problem, or a phone problem? He has upgraded his software to the new OS, but I couldn't because I kept having errors and it wouldn't let me. Others have posted on another forum that upgrading actually fixed the issue on their phones. I'll go home today and try it again.

I also can't turn off my SMTP Yahoo outgoing mail server. When I go in to try to change information, it's greyed out and I can't change anythign. Two differences I've noticed between my settings and his are the following. Everythign else is pretty much the same.

His phone: Use SSL is on
My phone: Use SSL is off

His phone: Authentication field shows nothing
My phone: Authentication field shows "password" (but I can't go in to do anyting)

His phone: Server port number is something like 476 (that's probably not it, but close. I have it written down at home)
My phone: Server port number is 0.

I'm not sure if these differences are because he upgraded and I didn't.

For now I guess I'll use the workaround of going into yahoo through safari. I don't want to risk losing my folders.

To think I've had this phone and the whole "mobile" experience for less than a year and I can't beleive how much it is crippling me when its not working right.
It's making me a really crabby person. It's consuming all of my energy!

I just got off the phone with Apple. I went through apple.com and had someone call me. No charge. The first woman I spoke with said that they had heard a little about the problem but that the password issue was something new (how some of us have determined that the password length we enter is somehow lengthened or shortened just after we enter it). She forwarded me to a Sr. Manager. He said that the problem is pretty new and that Apple has not yet sent out an advisory to all of its technicians so not everyone knows about it. We went through all of the fixes discussed here and none of them worked. He said that one technician had suggested that to go in and change the account password on your pc and the try and set up the account again on the iphone. That may work for some but my master password cannot be changed and so I cannot try this. The guy I spoke with didn't know if this had been successful but said he had heard about it.

The Sr. technician I spoke with did say that he was uncertain if it was an Apple or a Yahoo problem but indicated that they wanted to take care of restoring service to their customers so he was going to forward the information up the chain to make certain that the engineers who work between Apple and Yahoo are aware. He said to call back if things had not worked themselves out in a few days. We will see...

PROBLEM SOLVED - My wife's phone had the same issue. She has an Iphone with firmware 3.1 something. A few days ago she could no longer send outgoing email messages. She uses bellsouth.net. An error would pop up and say that either the username or password was incorrect. Tried all kinds of things to no avail. Then, I knew that she hadn't updated the phone's firmare since she bought it last year. The newest firmware version for her Iphone was now 4.2.1. I hooked up her phone to the computer and logged in to her Itunes account. It immediately said that her Iphone needed updating. It backed up her phone first. Then, it downloaded the newest firmware version and added her email account back onto her phone and it works like a charm now.

Well -- It looks like maybe this problem is solved, but it has nothing to do with downloading a newer OS.
Whoever/whatever got screwed up seems to have been resolved.

An outgoing (test) e-mail stuck on my iPhone for a few days just (miraculously) sent...

Keeping my fingers crossed....

It's fixed/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png Mine started automatically. It also sent the messages that wouldn't send yesterday/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png Yea/___sbsstatic___/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png/___sbsstatic__ _/migration-images/migration-img-not-avail.png

Suela 🙂