topic Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working in Email

Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

tinker47 — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 14:38:05 GMT

Like a lot of other users, over the past couple of days, both of our Android phones have requested that we re-input our password in order to use Outlook. We have a couple of mailboxes, so for the purpose of this message I'll call the main one MYaccount@myemailaddress.plus.com and I'll call the other one HISaccount@myemailaddress.plus.com

I have the main email address and couldn't just add in the password and other details as it didn't accept it. I had to delete my account on Outlook on the phone and reset it up, but this worked fine.

For the other phone, I did the same, but there is no way it's accepting the settings I'm inputting. Can someone look at these and tell me what I'm doing wrong please? I can't see anything wrong, but maybe I'm missing something

Under the CONNECT IMAP heading

email address = HISaccount@myemailaddress.plus.com

Display Name = The name I want the recipient to see

Description = Work email

IMAP Host Name = imap.plus.net:143

IMAP user name = myemailaddress+HISaccount

IMAP Password = is correct, because I changed it this morning on the website, just in case I had it wrong!!!

SMTP Outgoing Email Server = relay.plus.net:587 (I've also tried 25)

SMTP Username = myemailaddress+HISaccount

SMTP Password = (as above)

All of this is exactly as stated on the plusnet website, but I keep getting log-in error messages. The first one says "Secure connection unavailable. Would you like to log in anyway?"

I click on Log-In and get another error message "Please check your email and password and try again"

I can't see what I'm doing wrong and it's driving me potty. Can anyone help please?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

MisterW — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 14:57:06 GMT

@tinker47 The password for a secondary mailbox i.e HISaccount is not necessarily the same as the account password. It''s the password associated with the mailbox.

BTW You can now use a secure IMAP connection on port 993

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

tinker47 — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 15:13:49 GMT

Hi MisterW

Sorry, I should have made it clear that I used the secondary password (which is different to my password). I know it’s correct because my other half is useless with passwords and couldn’t remember it, so I changed it at 9.30am this morning. He has since logged in to webmail with it, so I know it’s correct.

I’ve also tried the secure port, but I’m afraid this didn’t work either. Still can’t get in!!

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

MisterW — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 15:29:52 GMT

He has since logged in to webmail with it, so I know it’s correct.

@tinker47 Yes, that does confirm its correct, If webmail works then its down to Outlook. I've never used it myself but there does seem to be a few problems with it, if these forums are anything to go by, usually after updates. Although from what I've seen on here, deleting the account and starting again usually sorts it out, but you say you've done that already ?

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

MisterW — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 15:40:51 GMT

@tinker47 try changing the IMAP username to HISaccount@myemailaddress.plus.com . I'm not confident it will fix it but it's worth a try. It will certainly let you use that for webmail and I've just tried it on one of my accounts (albeit using K9 mail) and it does work.

Given that one at least one of the other threads recently it appears to be only the PN mail account that has a problem , I wondered whether Outlook is getting confused with the 'odd' username with a '+' in it.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

tinker47 — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 16:13:42 GMT

@MisterW try changing the IMAP username to HISaccount@myemailaddress.plus.com

Sorry, this didn’t work either.

But, rather weirdly, I changed the SMTP to another port that someone else suggested (465) in another forum post from October last year and that worked.
Who knows??! In the end I used 993 for the IMAP server and 465 for smtp.
Thank you for taking the time to help me out with this. I don’t think the instructions are that clear on the Plusnet page because every time I get a new phone or computer, I have the same problems!!

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

MisterW — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 16:32:27 GMT

@tinker47 But, rather weirdly, I changed the SMTP to another port that someone else suggested (465) in another forum post from October last year and that worked.

That's really awful on the part of Outlook then. Port 465 was used to force SSL but it's use is now deprecated. The correct way is to use port 587 with STARTTLS, this allows the use of SSL if available. See here https://pepipost.com/blog/smtp-port-465/

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

iainmackay — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 15:30:27 GMT

I have been having this same problem since 4/8/2020. Outlook for Android, after working fine for months/years, starts asking for a sign-in to my Force9 IMAP service and rejects the credentials. Tried a "reset" of the email account, without success. Tried removing the account and adding it back in, but cannot get past the point where you input all the parameters (under the "Advanced Settings" option) and click the checkmark at top right. At present, the outcome varies between invalid username/password and an even more bizarre "service is offline" message. Checked all these against my Windows version of Outlook, which works fine so not a password problem. Tried all the above combinations of port changes, but no good. Tried an already installed Outlook for Android on another Android phone, and it is having the same issue! I even tried disabling wifi and connecting over 4G in case this was an artefact of my broadband service, but no deal.

So I tried adding the same account on Gmail on Android, which works fine. I conclude that whatever has happened, it's happened to Outlook for Android and not to my Force9 email service, nor can it be a straight problem with an update to Android OS. Anyone got an idea?

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

southerner — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 06:07:41 GMT

I hit the exact same scenario as @iainmackay with Outlook for Android last night & as he had to switch to the Gmail app to get back into my mail.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

Townman — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 11:52:38 GMT

Might these help...

The last one has interesting detail - have the IMAP and SMTP servers in the Outlook mail settings been configured to use SSL encryption?

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

southerner — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 14:42:51 GMT

Thanks for the links @Townman
Got me thinking to try un-linking my phone from my Microsoft.com account & logging out of my account an in again and voila Outlook allowed me to add my Plusnet email account once more and did a full synch.
Not sure which of those options or whether both fixed the issue but it looks like the app is also communicating with the user's Microsoft.com account away from the mail server settings.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

stumped — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 18:30:18 GMT

I've had the same problem, in gmail on android. Had to exit my VPN: once I did that it accepted the settings and started working again.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

Townman — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 18:32:45 GMT

that is more likely to have been due to (a) the SMTP server not having authentication details correct or (b) the VPN IP address being black balled.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

southerner — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 08:11:21 GMT

Alas this keeps coming back . Mostly after the app updates itself but also randomly.
Removing the Plusnet profile and re-adding it seems to temporarily resolve they issue but it will only work with smtp.plus.net:465 with which a certificate error is thrown but Outlook is OK if you ignore the warning. Trying to use relay.plus.net:465 doesn't work at all with Outlook constantly throwing incorrect username/password errors.
For ref for incoming mail I'm using imap.plus.net:993 Outlook doesn't seem to complain about this.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

MisterW — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 08:36:38 GMT

@southerner wrote:
but it will only work with smtp.plus.net:465 with which a certificate error is thrown but Outlook is OK if you ignore the warning. Trying to use relay.plus.net:465 doesn't work at all with Outlook constantly throwing incorrect username/password errors.

smtp.plus.net is just an alias for relay.plus.net.

relay.plus.net SHOULD work fine although it's probably better to use STARTTLS and port 587 as forcing SSL on port 465 is deprecated

I can see why you MIGHT get the cert error on smtp.plus.net. I wonder if the error is causing outlook to revert to TLS or no security when you continue.

We do regularly see posts on here where Outlook seems to throw a hissy fit and deleting/recreating the account makes it work again.

Personally I use Thunderbird on PC & laptop and K9 on Android tablets/phones and they all work fine using SSL for both incoming POP & IMAP and outgoing SMTP. K9 can have some issues regarding battery drain if set for autosync though.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

Townman — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 08:49:40 GMT

I use Outlook extensively with no issues. But I do not use VPNs which I suspect is contributing To the issues. Note I believe I’m correct in suggesting that The certificate is set up for relay.plus.net not smtp.plus.net

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

Townman — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 10:05:52 GMT

Having checked the certificate on my machine...

It is issues to - CN = relay.plus.net
It has aliases (alternate names) of...
- DNS Name=relay.plus.net
- DNS Name=www.relay.plus.net
- DNS Name=relay.force9.net
- DNS Name=relay.free-online.net
- DNS Name=relay.metronet.co.uk
- DNS Name=relay.pndsl.co.uk

Therefore the use of smtp.plus.net will give rise to certificate errors.

if you can run TELNET on your platform, you could try the following (over the VPN connection) to bottom out the cause of the error. Ignore references to set-up in Win10 environments.

Test SMTP authentication

Email programs often report username / password error for issues not actually related to those being wrong, but for other connectivity issues. Such can be very frustrating when you are convinced that they are correct. Testing SMTP authentication through a command line interface can deliver a more precise error message. The following describes how to do this using TELNET.

This is not difficult, but you need the following resources which might be unfamiliar...

TELNET - this might need installing as an additional option, for Windows see enabling TELNET.
A code64 encoder / decoder such as this.

You can use TELNET to communicate direct with the SMTP server as follows...

Open the code64 encoder in a web browser and leave ready for use in the following steps.

Launch a windows command line window (DOS window) - press windows-key+R - type CMD into the run box - click OK

Enter...

telnet relay.plus.net 587

Press enter. Note if you use one of the other brand email services, use the appropriate SMTP server name for that brand. In response to SMTP server I'm here message, say 'HELLO'...

EHLO relay.plus.net

The SMTP server will then report what it can do after which tell the server you wish to authenticate...

AUTH login

The server should return the following, which is a base64 encoded string that requires your username:

334 VXNlcm5hbWU6

Use the code64 encoder to encode your username and paste it into the telnet window and press enter. For example:

bXl1c2VybmFtZQ==

The server should return the following, which is a base64 encoded string that requires your password:

334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6

Paste the base64 encoded password for the username. For example:

bXlwYXNzd29yZA==

The server will then report success or failure, any failure message should clearly indicate the reason for the failure. If the reason for the failure is not clear, please report back the message.

Close the SMTP / TELNET session by entering

quit

The session should look something similar to the below wherein your input is in bold...

220 avasout03 smtp relay.plus.net
EHLO relay.plus.net
250-avasout03 hello [your IP address], pleased to meet you
250-HELP
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
250-SIZE 104857600
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-STARTTLS
250 OK
AUTH LOGIN
334 VXNlcm5hbWU6
bXl1c2VybmFtZQ==
334 UGFzc3dvcmQ6
bXlwYXNzd29yZA==
235 ... authentication succeeded
quit
221 avasout03 smtp closing connection
Connection to host lost.

Here are some examples of failure responses...

535 ...authentication rejected [as username / password is wrong]
535 ...authentication rejected as source IP has a poor reputation

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

iainmackay — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 11:26:30 GMT

I've given up. Tried many of the suggested fixes, but it just keeps coming back. It wouldn't be so bad if the error message remained consistent, but it varies depending on...well, I can't find a pattern! Add to that the teeth-grinding frustration of trying to discuss issues via the Outlook for Android in-app "support", plus that fact that the Android app resembles the Windows version in name only, and I wonder why I've kept on with it for so long.

I have set up GMail to handle my three email accounts and shall monitor how that performs. It's working at present, which is a step forward from what I was getting with Outlook.

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

Townman — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 11:46:44 GMT

Remind me - is this connecting over 3/4G or Wi-Fi?

Re: Outlook settings for Android (IMAP) not working

iainmackay — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:10:45 GMT

In my case, both WiFi/broadband and 4g.