smtp server rejected password for mail account. How can I reset this?

Have you tried the Connection Doctor? It's in the Mail/ Window dropdown list.

If that does not help, see the advice in this Apple article.

If Mail on your Mac keeps asking for your password - Apple Support

Did this just start happening on June 16, as another poster in this thread said?

It seems you are not using a third-party app, as that person is.

One basic thing to try is to rebuild your inbox in the Mail / Mailbox dropdown menu.

Have you tried Apple Support? Contact - Official Apple Support

Try this.

In Mail/Preferences/Accounts/, select the account in question and choose Server setting at top right. In the Outgoing Mail Account box, open the dropdown menu and select Edit SMTP server list. There you can reenter your password or try changing it. Make sure you have a backup before doing this.

See if this is any help. http://www.wikihow.com/Find-Incoming-Mail-Server

One other thing to try. If you have all the details for that account, try resetting it. In the "edit SMPT server list" window, use the + sign to add the server again.

A few questions.

Do you have just one mail account, and can you tell us which one it is?

What exactly is the error message you get? (Don't post your email address.)

Do you have two-factor authentication turned on?

Did you ever use Keychain Access to automatically fill in your password for email? If so you can find the password. Open Keychain Access through Spotlight. In the Keychain Access sidebar, choose Passwords, and in the search field, type in your mail address or just the part after the @ mark. You'll probably get a list of items. Double-click on the one you think is right and in the window that comes up, check the box for Show Password. You have to authenticate it with your computer login password.

Some people recommend deleting the Keychain password (after making a note of it) and starting over again. Try all the items related to your email to check if there are diffferent passwords for it. Deleting them all may solve the problem.

Hi,

jackfromtallai wrote:

I know the user name but not the password, so who do I contact to reset the password? Appleid or iCloud will just reset my appleid but can't find anything, or talk to anyone about mail server passwords .

If I understand correctly, it sounds like you don't know the password to access your email from the server, even directly at the email server's website? There have been court cases about this; they protect privacy by not giving out the password to anyone for almost any reason.

I am seeing this with all my users today. I have 4 mac users and my own test account. ALL of them are getting this error when trying to connect to icloud using a client such as Outlook 2011 for Mac. This just started today Friday June 16, 2017. It is 10:12am PST in California right now. I expect this is a server-based authentication problem that is not the fault of all the clients at the same time losing their passwords or somehow forgetting them. So apple NOC needs to fix this issue.

So I am connecting to imap.mail.me.com for imap on SSL 993 (per apple documents and auto-config) and smtp.mail.me.com also automatic but port 587 SSL/Nonstandard (i.e. not port 25). Web-Based icloud works just fine but that is expected if the authentication is imap or SMTP based. The web based iCloud is a completely different client.

Update: 10:23am Pacific 6-16-2017

Outlook for Mac now showing 'connected' to icloud. However all sent emails are sitting in the outbox. Authentication errors have gone away and in Outlook 2011 for Mac / Accounts it shows 'green' now where it was yellow earlier. But mail is not sending. SMTP is set to use authentication of the inbound mail server.

Update 11:00am Pacific 6-16-2017

Touched nothing, but send and receive have now taken the account offline again. So something has changed on the Apple side but it is worse and not better. Password request coming up for send and receive, and outbox test items still never sent.

UPDATE 3:08PM Friday June 16-2017 Pacific time

Without changing anything now the clients for all my users are working again for icloud using Outlook 2011 for Mac. Once we knew it was on the icloud side we left everything be and about 20 minutes ago all the emails started connecting again.

Are you using a third-party app to access mail? Apparently Apple has changed the rules. See this thread.

Windows Live Mail 2012 has quit accepting my username and password for p07-smtp.mail.me.com

Try the "look up your mail settings" link in this article: Mail - Official Apple Support

And while there, see the "Help me with Mail" button at the bottom.