Every other day, my Outlook email goes from working just fine to suddenly getting the error message “Cannot authenticate with ***@hotmail.com”, the account itself works fine in the browser and on my phone (using Spark).
Any attempts to re-add the email account then gets the error “Authentication Error - Check your username and password. (IMAP)”, the password is most definitely correct as this is being copied from a password manager.
I have tried to disable 2FA on the email account, use app passwords (whilst 2FA is enabled), change the password, but this issue keeps popping up and leaves my email account unable to be added.
I believe you are supposed to use the Office 365 button for hotmail. However, that doesn’t work for me either:
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: Error: An unknown error has occurred (mailsync: 134)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (file:///tmp/nylas-build/electron-packager/linux-x64/mailspring-linux-x64-6Ns7Ou/resources/app/src/mailsync-process.ts:252:25)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at ChildProcess.emit (node:events:513:28)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at ChildProcess.emit (node:domain:489:12)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at maybeClose (node:internal/child_process:1093:16)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at Socket.<anonymous> (node:internal/child_process:451:11)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at Socket.emit (node:events:513:28)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at Socket.emit (node:domain:489:12)
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: at Pipe.<anonymous> (node:net:757:14) {
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: rawLog: '\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: 'Waiting for Account JSON:\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: 'Waiting for Identity JSON:\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: 'info: Identity created at 1717451715 - using ID Schema 1\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: 'info: Fetching XOAuth2 access token (office365) for e0fb1f1e\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: 'critical: \n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '***\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '*** Mailspring Sync \n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '*** An exception occurred during program execution: \n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: `*** {"debuginfo":"https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/token RETURNED {\\"error\\":\\"invalid_scope\\",\\"error_description\\":\\"AADSTS70011: The provided resource value for the input parameter 'scope' is not valid...
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '***\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: 'critical: \n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '***\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '*** Mailspring Sync \n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '*** An exception occurred during program execution: \n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: `*** {"debuginfo":"https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/token RETURNED {\\"error\\":\\"invalid_scope\\",\\"error_description\\":\\"AADSTS70011: The provided resource value for the input parameter 'scope' is not valid...
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '***\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '\n' +
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: '/snap/mailspring/541/usr/share/mailspring/resources/app.asar.unpacked/mailsync: line 5: 58693 Aborted (core dumped) SASL_PATH="$SCRIPTPATH" LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$SCRIPTPATH;$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" "$SCRIPTPATH/mailsync.bin" "$@"\n'
Jun 03 13:22:04 plasmashell[56978]: } { pluginIds: [] }
Hello,
As per my knowledge,
1 Update Outlook: Ensure it’s the latest version.
2 Clear Credentials: Remove stored credentials from Windows Credential Manager.
3 Re-add Account: Remove and re-add your email with manual IMAP settings.
4 App Passwords: Use an app password if 2FA is enabled.
5 Check Network: Ensure your network/VPN isn’t causing issues.
6 New Profile: Create a new Outlook profile in Control Panel.
7 Firewall/Antivirus: Temporarily disable to test if they’re blocking authentication.
I hope this will help you,
Thank you
Having the same issue and a bit confused with @robertsrose answer… what would the Outlook app and Windows Credential Manager have to do with Mailspring? What would my Firewall/Antivirus have to do with a connection to a remote sever? Excuse me my ignorance just trying to understand how Mailspring account authentication works to see if I can fix this…
I’m going through Mailspring’s account settings to try to connect… tried both with the outlook/hotmail and IMAP option but it’s the same… I haven’t tried Office 365 @Retalak said as there’s an explicit hotmail option and it didn’t even work for him… Are you guys AI’s? lol
There is no option for app passwords. Maybe it’s only a feature if you’re using Microsoft 365?
In any case, I strongly suspect that the issue is related to Microsoft’s deprecating and soon to be removing of password-based login on non-Microsoft apps. See
where they clearly state that going forward, all “third-party” apps need to support Oauth2 login. For how it’s supposed to work, see the section on Thunderbird. Or just try adding a GMail account, which I’m pretty sure does use OAuth.
As things stand I may look into trying Thunderbird again, as it’s apparently better capable of handling Outlook.com accounts…
I spent a while trying to get Mailspring to sign into an old hotmail account with an app password and it kept failing, but it worked a few days later when I did exactly the same thing, so I’d been blaming some kind of outage on Microsoft’s end. Maybe trying again later will work for other people.
However, by September 16th, 2024, something will need to change as that’s when Microsoft drop support for password-based login and the app password approach will stop working. I can’t find any thread where a developer’s said that they’re planning to do anything about that, so if anyone’s got a link, that would ease my mind.
I did not had this issue, but soon I will since app password are going to be deprecated after 16th September 2024 so there will be no way to authenticate with app password (or regular password if you got 2FA disabled) anymore.
I think that a lot of users will face the issue so if you cannot create “App passwords” or your account is missing the option, simply ACTIVATE 2FA IN YOUR MICROSOFT ACCOUNT !
That’s not true. App password that you are suggesting will not work after 16th September.
Read the above link
I quote:
“App passwords or Application passwords will be deprecated as part of the Basic Auth deprecation. You will need to use Modern Auth for all cases.”
Yes, you are correct that AppPasswords for BasicAuth are disabled and that there is a lot of confusion because of Microsofts unclear/complicated statements. BUT also they state that “The deprecation of basic authentication will also prevent the use of app passwords with apps that don’t support two-step verification.” and that you now have to enable 2FA in your Account before you can create an AppPassword maybe makes it a “two-step verification method”.
Also why would MS still allow new AppPasswords/Registrations when they remove that feature in 2 Month? At least they would add a Notification to it … I would be thankful for a full and clear MS Statement to all this.
And btw, the best, safest and cleanest Solution would be OAUTH2 Support by MailSpring. AppPasswords are a workaround that can get disabled at anytime by MS