Hotmail password problem

MouldyOldDough

Why would my Hotmail password work for Outlook, both outlook.com (online) AND outlook from Office 2019 – but not when using Thunderbird ?

Server settings being the same......

Rodders53

Microsoft Hotmail
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Office
Mozilla Thunderbird

Spot the theme?  

Microsoft OAuth Authentication and Thunderbird in 2024 | Thunderbird Help should help you sort out the authentication issues.

Grumpy_chap

It may be unrelated, but I understand that Microsoft have been experiencing some authentication issues in the past day or so.

Is the OP's issue being experienced a new one, or long-standing?  If it is a new issue, it may self resolve when the wider authentication issues are addressed.

Neil_Jones

I'm pretty sure you were given the OAuth  answer last time you asked this...

Qew

Neil_Jones said:

I'm pretty sure you were given the OAuth  answer last time you asked this...

Microsoft changed it so that you needed to set up OAuth for third party applications logging into their email accounts.

Thunderbird works fine with my Hotmail/Outlook email accounts, because I set up OAuth a while ago.

More info here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/microsoft-oauth-authentication-and-thunderbird-202

Bikemad

I set all of my Hotmail accounts to OAuth2 back in September last year, but up until 2nd December I was having to regularly reenter the passwords and verify all of my Hotmail and Outlook email accounts every 2-7 days, but I have not had to do this for over a month.
I though the connection problem had finally been rectified by either Thunderbird or Microsoft, but I've started experiencing connection problems again over the past few days with several Hotmail email accounts on Thunderbird, all of which are still using OAuth2.
It initially started with with just one Hotmail account refusing to connect, and a blank window headed "Enter credentials for ****************@hotmail.com on outlook.office365.com" was displayed. As there was no way to enter any credentials into a completely blank window I was unable to rectify the connection problem.
I originally tried removing the troublesome account, but I then discovered that I was unable to add it again as it would not connect to Microsoft!
I currently have no option but to close multiple blank windows every time they appear (typically every 10 minutes).

It's strange that my wife, who also uses Thunderbird on an identical PC, has not experienced any problems with both of her Hotmail accounts, one of which is the account that I removed and added on my PC, which I can only access via outlook.live.com using Google Chrome.
I purposely have not touched the other four Hotmail accounts which are currently still not accessible in Thunderbird, as I'm hoping that the problem is with either Microsoft or Thunderbird and will hopefully be fixed soon.

Bikemad

Update:
The problem I am experiencing appears to be within my Thunderbird application, as I have been able to add the suspect Hotmail accounts to a new profile (Help/Troubleshooting Information/Profiles/about:profiles/Create a New Profile) and it then allows me to enter password details and authenticate the five non-working Hotmail accounts with Microsoft without any problem.

Deleting the problem Hotmail account from my original profile and then re-adding it back into the original profile definitely does not work.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet managed to find a simple way to delete the saved authentication details to hopefully allow the passwords to be re-entered and authenticated again on my original profile for the five non-working Hotmail accounts.
I suspect it may be a lot quicker to just add the additional ten working email accounts to the new profile and then remove the original profile from Thunderbird.