iphone won't recognize valid hotmail password

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Level 1

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iphone won't recognize valid hotmail password

I’m not sure where to post this request for help because it involves my wife’s iPhone 6s (Apple) and her Hotmail account (Microsoft). I’ll start here.

My wife has a Hotmail account which she accesses by means of Outlook on our Dell desktop running windows 8.1 and Firefox. She has also set up this account on her iPhone 6s in the Mail app.

Last week, her Hotmail acct may have been hacked. She got a message from Hotmail saying she was locked out of it. She had to answer some of their questions to prove her identity to them before they’d give her a temp password to get into her account, where she would then have to create a new password. She did this and she can access her Hotmail account properly on our desktop computer.

But when she tried to change her password on her iPhone 6s, in the Mail app, for some reason it is not working. She gets error messages on her phone saying her Hotmail account password is not valid. She is positive she has entered it correctly in her Mail app settings on the phone, but we cannot figure what’s wrong and what to do about it.

Can anyone please suggest what we should try? What other info should I find out about her accounts and post here, to help anyone help us diagnose this issue?

One thing I thought of, that I will not tell her to try unless I’m positive it won’t make a bad situation worse: Could she simply delete her Hotmail account settings on her iPhone now, and just recreate a new Hotmail account from scratch on her iPhone, entering the supposedly new, correct Hotmail password? That would not do any damage to the real Hotmail account on whatever servers it’s on, would it? The iPhone Mail app settings are simply a group of settings that the phone uses to establish contact with her actual Hotmail account, isn’t it? So deleting and recreating it shouldn’t mess up the actual Hotmail acct, I’d think.

As always, all thanks in advance for any and all help rendered!

iPhone 6s, iOS 9.2

Posted on Apr 30, 2016 10:59 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Phil0124

Community+ 2024

Level 10

199,143 points

Apr 30, 2016 11:08 AM in response to gtomseeley

You can go to Settings->Mail, Contacts & Calendars->Accounts->Her Hotmail Account->Account, and re-enter the password there. See if that works.

If it still won't work, yes, deleting the account from the iPhone is the next step.

It will not affect the actual account, basically you would just be deleting the link to that account that is on her iPhone.

Then set it up again. You are not creating a new account, simply setting up access to the same one again.

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Answer 2

gtomseeley Author

Level 1

13 points

Apr 30, 2016 11:13 AM in response to Phil0124

Thanks. My abbreviated orig post--But when she tried to change her password on her iPhone 6s,--meant to say that she has already done all of what you suggest in your opening sentence, and it does not work. I guess I didn't make that clear.

But I appreciate knowing that it won't hurt to try just deleting the entire account on the phone and starting all over again. We'll try that next.

Thx.

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Answer 3

gtomseeley Author

Level 1

13 points

Apr 30, 2016 11:54 AM in response to Phil0124

Phil0124:

On second thought...after reading your helpful reply, and after I replied, I thought about it some more. I think I'm more confused than I thought I was! 😊

I followed your instructions in your 1st paragraph, to see how to change just the iPhone Mail app Hotmail password in the existing Hotmail account, and I couldn't find how/where to do that! I got into the settings as far as choosing the actual Hotmail account on the iPhone, [settings/mail..../accounts/her Hotmail account/and so on..] but there's no window anywhere I could find, even under "advanced", that would let me type in just the revised password.

So how DO you change just the password in an existing account, without deleting the whole iPhone account and recreating the whole thing from scratch?

More to the point, if someone's acct does get hacked and they need to change their actual email acct password, or they just practice good security and change their email password themselves, IS there a way to input the new password into the iPhone Mail app without having to delete/recreate?

Just asking...

Thx again.

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Answer 4

Apr 30, 2016 12:08 PM in response to gtomseeley

gtomseeley wrote:

Phil0124:

On second thought...after reading your helpful reply, and after I replied, I thought about it some more. I think I'm more confused than I thought I was! 😊

IS there a way to input the new password into the iPhone Mail app without having to delete/recreate?

Yes. Once you select the account, from Mail, Contacts & Calendars, tap on the E-Mail address again there to get to the account details page, there you can tap on the password field to change the password, tap on "Done", and it will try to connect to the account with the provided password :

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Answer 5

gtomseeley Author

Level 1

13 points

Apr 30, 2016 1:58 PM in response to Phil0124

Phil0124:

Problem solved. Delete/recreate worked.

Interestingly, a comment re why I was having the problem understanding your instructions for how she should change her Hotmail password. I was writing about my wife's Hotmail account, which shows up on her iPhone in a certain way, but I have a gmail account, which shows up on mine differently! What you were saying she'd see on her phone I don't see at all on mine, because we have different kinds of email accounts. That's why I was so confused about how to change a password. That option apparently does not exist at all for my gmail acct even tho it does for hers! [Doesn't answer the question how do I change my gmail acct password in my phone, should I need to, other than delete/recreate, but I'll save that for a later day!]

Second comment: Her original email acct settings on her iPhone considered her acct a Hotmail acct, which it is, as far as we're concerned, whether or not Microsoft thinks she's reading it within Outlook. But when we recreated it, it got set up on the phone as an Outlook account! Even some of the "advanced" setting options are different now that she has told the phone it's an Outlook acct, not a Hotmail acct. I suspect that could account for some of the original problem, but since the original problem is now well and truly solved, what difference does it make!?

Thanks again for your help!

Ain't technology grand?

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Answer 6

May 2, 2016 7:46 AM in response to gtomseeley

Yes, G-Mail has different options. In any case, glad it worked out.

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Answer 7

ManSinha

Level 6

12,171 points

May 2, 2016 7:52 AM in response to gtomseeley

MS has sunsetted Hotmail and converted those to Outlook.com

Reading through - your wife's original account may have been POP if it was set up a while back

Similar to Apple's @icloud.com which is an alias for former @mac.com and @me.com - MS has @outlook.com as an alias for former @msn.com and @hotmail.com accounts

Glad your issue was resolved -

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Answer 8

Jun 28, 2016 2:56 AM in response to gtomseeley

log into your microsoft (hotmail) account and disable 2 step verification. then, set up your hotmail on outlook in iphone settings.

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Answer 9

Dec 7, 2016 11:27 AM in response to gtomseeley

I'm having the same problem, have re entered the password and also deleted the account then put it in again and still no luck. It said that the 'host name' which was an imap-mail address was incorrect and not working but I didn't set that so don't know what it should be?

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Answer 10

Dec 8, 2016 7:17 AM in response to Chrispearson

Host Name is the server address you are trying to get mail from.

Are you trying to setup a Hotmail account? Or some other e-mail account?

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Answer 11

Jon-se11

Level 1

16 points

Dec 12, 2016 5:30 PM in response to gtomseeley

I'M not quite sure wether this will help I have the same problem on both my iPhone and iPad, because of increased security measures two step verification was set up. Now Microsoft want everybody to use a app specific password but this is where it's awkward in that Microsoft may have changed the rules in that they want everyone to change to outlook.com. So log into your Microsoft account and create a app password for each of your device's. That is what I'm going to do. I have this problem after installing the outlook and yahoo mail app, which I don't like because they created more problems

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