Mail keeps asking for Yahoo password

Geez...I've tried most of your solutions and I'm still having issues. I deleted Yahoo from my Outlook account and tried to add it again, but it keeps telling me that it can't verify my account. Um...I should know what my password is.

Every time I have an issue with Yahoo, I had to keep changing my password and write it down. I finally to stopped using my Yahoo account bc every time I did, it would automatically reload on me (I was reading an email in Safari, I was deleting an email, etc.). I got so fed up with Safari and Yahoo that I cleaned my Yahoo account out and moved to Outlook. But I'm still not having any success.

I can't get my Yahoo account added back into Outlook bc it says it can't verify my password.

Sometimes I get a pop that says it's having issues with iCloud and says my storage is almost full. It keeps telling me that my mail account has 35.6 MB of files, but if I deleted my Yahoo account and don't have much in my Outlook account, I don't understand how it could still be full?!?!?!?

Does anyone have any suggestions that I can try? I'm beyond frustrated with Apple's iCloud services not working and Outlooks inability to work right.

I finally figured out how to fix this issue. You need to go into your Keychains and delete all the keychains that reference apple. Take your time as you go through your keychains so you don't delete the wrong ones. Once you've deleted all your apple keychains, you can sign in again with no issues.

I've been having this problem - I believe since Lion. I'm on Mountain Lion 10.8.2 now. This happens only with my yahoo account. About once a week - and is very problematic for about a day - and then finally after many times reentering my password - it stops - but then shows up again in a few days. Connection doctor shows all connections are connecting just fine - even while the "enter password for yahoo" window is displayed.

I have this problem too, and I agree it's most annoying! It takes several attempts for Yahoo to settle down and access my mail and then randomly in a few days it starts all over again. What's the solution Apple Geniuses?

That password prompt often appears when the mail server does not respond quickly enough to a request from Mail.app. I use Mail.app with multiple email providers and the Yahoo! IMAP service is easily the most unreliable.

For the sake of clarity, can you please confirm that you have it set up as an IMAP account?

Secondly, if you do, try changing the mailbox settings so that draft messages are not stored on the server, and that it Never permanently erases deleted messages (you will still be able to do this manually). I have found that these changes helped.

This seems to have worked, thank you!

I believe I just changed it a while back so that it does permanently erase deleted message and that it does store various messages (junk) on the server - the exact opposite of what you are suggesting. I can't say that changing these settings caused the problem - because I believe I was seeing the problem prior to doing that. I see a similar behavior with my yahoo account on my iphone and ipad. I don't get a lot of email on my yahoo account - but I do believe there is quite a bit of spam and other junk email that comes through it - and I'm wondering is that is contributing to the problem. I have quite a few different email accounts set up on my Macs and iDevices. I will try your suggestion

For my Gmail account - I had to tell it to store mail on the server and also to permanently delete messages - to get around the fact that Google never deletes anything - but rarely - if at all - do I see this particular problem with my gmail account - it's mostly yahoo.

Okay, sorry, Rodney W, I tried your workaround but as usual with this Yahoo issue, the problem randomly came back and it's as annoying as ever.

To Rodney W - I have tried your suggested workaround - with a slight modification.

On my Macs and iOS devices - I have set the mailbox options not to store any items on the server (not just drafts) and I have set auto delete to "Never". So basically - everything is being stored on my Mac/iOS device and I must manually delete items. In this configuration - I am losing some functionality - in that I can't see sent items from one device - on another - and cannot start a draft email on one device and pick it up on another. For my yahoo account - this is not a big issue - because I rarely send email from the yahoo account.

So far - I have not been prompted for my yahoo password - on any Mac or iOS device - but ... it has still been less than 24 hours since making these changes. I will keep a close watch on it.

To Rodney and Chet ...

Since my last post a few days ago - I have not seen the Yahoo popup at all. The changes I made (described in my previous post) seem to have had a postive impact on the problem.

One additional thing that I am noticing is that my Mac Mail has not locked up when trying to exit. It had been locking up periodically when attempting to quit mail - for no apparent reason. I believe the mail lockups started occurring shortly after the Yahoo popups started occurring. Maybe the two problems are related.

I will keep a close eye on this.

The delay on close of Mail.app is definitely caused by Mail.app and Yahoo! failing to communicate properly over the deletion of items in Trash. I have tested that quite thoroughly.

The passwords issue seems to be unrelated (in a direct sense), but I have found it works most reliably if the only time that Mail.app needs to communicate with the Yahoo! servers is retrieiving, marking and sending email.

I still get regular "hang-ups" where deletions are not recorded though.

This only happens with Yahoo! - Mail.app works perfectly (for me) with iCloud, Gmail and Fastmail.

Cheers,

RW

I am pretty sure that I started noticing this with Mountain Lion - and it did not matter whether it was a clean install or an upgrade. And yes - it is "only" with Yahoo.

~Scott

Chet - I have had all the services unchecked (other than mail) for the Yahoo! account pretty much since day one - and I was still having the problem up until recently - when I joined this discussion.

~Scott

The problem is back as of this morning. At least 5 occurences of the invalid password for Yahoo! popup. So far - still no locking up upon quitting mail.