Mail keeps asking for my password but the password is correct

Here is what worked for me.

I had initially entered a password for both Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server. When I updated my password, I only updated the password associated with the Incoming Mail Server. I had forgotten to update the Outgoing Mail Server password.

What's confusing is that this password is not set in System Preferences, but under the Mail>Preferences.

1. Open up Mail and Select Mail>Preferences... (or press command-comma).

2. Click on Accounts

3. Click on the mail account that has been giving you the error

4. Click on the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) entry and from the drop down menu select "Edit SMTP Server List"

5. Select the Outgoing Mail Server that has been giving you the error

6. Select Advanced

7. Update the Password and click on OK.

That's it. My problem has not reoccurred since I did this. Hope this works for you.

Thanks for responding to my question. For some unknown reason the problem suddenly stopped and this mail account has been working just fine for the last several days. I'm going to save the precedures you sent because this will probably happen again.

I have the same issue. It is predominantl;y with Yahoo.

I take it back. The problem has resurface after about two weeks!

Has anyone found a solution with yahoo?

Ok There seems to be a problem with Keychain and Yahoo Mail. Yahoo mail keeps wanting to verify the account password on IMAP accounts it seems and Mac mail asks for your password. What I noticed when you type in the password then Keychain creats another key. (crazy) soooo Keychain gets bloated and it doesn't know which PW to use. How I fix it for now is I deleted everything on mail the Account and recreated it. Deleted all the keychains for mail in keychain. Oh close mail right after you create the new account do not use it yet. Close keychain. Shut down and restart the computer, so far this seems to help as of 5/5/2013. So the problem is both Apple and yahoo nothing will get fixed on yahoo end I am sure but apple may be working on a keychain solution. This is for OSX 10.6.8 as I cannot up grade to the newer version of OSX. Hope this works for you, Gmail and Road runner do not seem to have this issue.

I'm getting the same problem over last few days and getting worse, just constant password requests and not able to send or receive emails. It comes back from time to time but is really stressing me out. Please think of something Apple with the Mail software if at all poss...

It stopped doing this shortly after I posted and has only done it a couple of times since. I never changed anything. That makes me believe its on Yahoo's end.

I am also thinking this is Yahoo.

Never happens with Gmail.

I also had no problem with using a browser

to retrieve/send my Yahoo accounts.

I have solved the issue (temporarily?) by using the above steps to repair Keychain

and re-enter info under Advanced.

I have encountered this issue previously, for no apparent reason.

But this went on for several days this week and was quite consistent.

I don't think Yahoo gives a $@#$!!, frankly!

Just repaired my issue after months of temorarily fixing it various ways... My Yahoo! server would go down and not send or receive mail and it would also ask for my password over&over&over&over&over...

https://www.apple.com/support/macosx/mailassistant/

Going through this mail assistant should help you discover if anything is off. My server list had several types under it when it is only supposed to have one.

Good luck!

I have come across this issue with various different macs running various different versions of os x many times and it's not always an issue associated with yahoo accounts I have had clients report this issue with all types of email accounts and there are generally 3 causes of the issue

1 there is an issue with the mail server or connection to the mail server so it's worth trying a different Internet connection to test the issue if the issue is constant and also try contacting your email service provider as it may be a widespread issue and they may have to fix something at their end making further trouble shooting redundant

2 there is an issue with the settings your using in mail therefore the Mac cant authenticate with the server and asks for the password again in error for instance a common scenario would be mail asks for a password for an smtp server that doesnt require a password because the authentication is not set to none as it should be Here are 2 helpful links in regards to mail settings http://www.apple.com/au/support/macosx/mailassistant/ & http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1277

3 there is an issue with the keychain now 9 times out of 10 keychain first aide either won't fix the issue or will only temporarily fix the issue so the last but probably the most effective step is to reset the default keychain which you can do by following the instructions in the following link http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1544 NOTE: by resetting the default keychain you will clear out all passwords previously saved by you in your user account so if you don't know all your passwords it's probably not the best thing to try but again it's very effective I hope all this help good luck with fixing your mail password issues

Mail Help Yahoo!

Unfortunately, this did not help. It's really odd-only one of two email accounts is affected, both are .me accounts. I am not having trouble with this account on other devices.

Now it's working. Why??? Magic, apparently.

This worked for me once, for about 3 hours. Then the problem occured again. Each time I would then delete the approriate keychain, however it never fixed it after that first time, even for a while. Deleting preferences does not fixi it either. There is no discernable reason why it will not accept passwords and then suddleny it works for a while - then breaks for hours, then works. Usually just repeat clicking 'cancel' on the password dialog box that pops up - gets some mail coming through. My iPhone 5c iOS 7.0 to the same imap account works fine BTW - so this is Mac Mail specific.

My experience with this repeated password request using an imap account over the last few weeks has come to the point where I've just moved to Thunderbird today - I'm over it. I have no idea if Thunderbird is any good - but is sure can't be as bad as imap on mac mail.

After using Mac Mail since it came out, I am very dissapointed. Mac Mail is completely usuable with the fault.

OS 10.7.5 Mac Mail 5.3