How do I delete my Mail passwords in the Preferences/Accounts pane? I have tried and it will not allow me to do this; this has been a problem with 10.8. I want to be able to type in the passwords when I start the program and get new messages.
iMac (24-inch Early 2008), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
Open up Keychain Access, select the login keychain, and find the entries for your email accounts.
Delete them.
When Mail aks for your password, don't select the remember check box.
Another way to accomplish what you want is to have your keychain lock after a period of time. That will lock everything that requires a password that you have stored in the keychain.
To do this, in Keychain Access, select the login keychain, then select
Change Settings for Keychain "login" from the Edit menu.
In the dialog, check the box to lock the keychain and set a time.
If you have some passwords that you don't want to lock down so hard, you can make a separate keychain that holds the passwords for the things you do want to lock down, create the passwords for those sites, accounts, etc and set that keychain to automatically lock after a period of time. Delete those passwords from the login keychain.
Message was edited by: Barney-15E
Thank you very much for the response/instructions. I did try your suggestion, but it did not work.
After deleting the logins from Keychain Access, I started up mail and was presented with the (Mail can’t connect to the account “xxxxx@xxx.xxx”) dialog box for each of my accounts. There was also an additional duplicate (Mail can’t connect to the account “xxxxx@xxx.xxx”) dialog box in the background. I have never seen this duplicate box before. I am thinking there is a bug with 10.8 or I have a corrupted file (preference ??????).
After typing my password into the dialog box, and denying the (Mail wants to use the “login” keychain.) dialog box, I am left with the duplicate (Mail can’t connect to the account “xxxxx@xxx.xxx”) dialog box in the background.
The duplicate (Mail can’t connect to the account “xxxxx@xxx.xxx”) dialog box in the background can not be satisfied. When the password is typed in, the OK button stays dimmed. When the Cancel button is clicked, Mail crashes.
I have tried with locking Keychain Access, and after restarts.
I mainly wanted to go back to typing in my passwords as I did before 10.8, so that I easily remember them. Maybe there is a bug with 10.8 (now 10.8.2), the System Preferences/Mail, Contacts & Calendars pane, and Mail.
Thank you again for your suggestion!
Below is a screenshot of the duplicated dialog box.
Hi, I am struggling with the almost identical problem to macuserforawhile with Mail version 6.6 (15.10) in Mountain Lion 10.8.5.
I have, and wish to retain, 4 active (POP) email accounts. But since my computer is not secure, I wish to be obliged to key in the password for each of the 4 accounts in order to retrieve POP email each time I start the Mail application. I understand that once I have keyed the passwords in, the Mail application will remember them. BUT with Snow Leopard 10.6.8, if I quit the Mail application, the passwords would be forgotten. In Mountain Lion, the Mail application remembers them even after I delete them, save the changes in Mail preferences, quit Mail and then restart it.
I have deleted the passwords for the 4 POP accounts in Keychain Access, and deleted them in the Mail preferences, but there seems no way of keeping them deleted ie Mail will not "forget" them, whatever I do.
Is there perhaps a way to deny Mail automatic access to Keychain Access?
Can anyone help out on this? Thanks in advance.
How do I delete my Mail passwords in the Preferences/Accounts pane?
