Outlook refuses to remember passwords

C

Clarry 69

I have 3 email accounts which I need to operate using Outlook (associated
with handheld Compaq) However despite entering passwords and asking for them
to be stored in the password list, Outlook requires them to be re-entered
every time I go to receive mail. I am on Vista, and when I use Windows Mail,
there is no problem - the passwords are stored OK. Can anyone help please?
 
G

Gordon

Clarry 69 said:
I have 3 email accounts which I need to operate using Outlook (associated
with handheld Compaq) However despite entering passwords and asking for
them
to be stored in the password list, Outlook requires them to be re-entered
every time I go to receive mail. I am on Vista, and when I use Windows
Mail,
there is no problem - the passwords are stored OK. Can anyone help please?


Version of Outlook? (A pretty pertinent piece of information which you chose
not to share with us....)
 
D

DL

And which version of Outlook would that be?
Its a known issue with Outlook 2002 (xp) as its not fully compatibel with
vista, and wont be fixed as its out of support.
 
P

Peter Foldes

Sigh. And have you read the other posts that are answering your question here in
this thread?? Gives you the answer and both by DL and Christian
 
G

Gordon

Clarry said:
Sorry! My error. Outlook 2002. No error messages, it simply doesn't do it.

That's a known problem with Outlook 2002. And as Outlook 2002 is no
longer supported, it won't be fixed, either.
 
V

VanguardLH

Clarry said:
Sorry! My error. Outlook 2002. No error messages, it simply doesn't
do it.

Gordon forgot to also ask you what is your operating system. It
matters. See below.

Outlook 2002 will NOT remember passwords when ran under Windows Vista.
Outlook 2002 was coded to use pstore (protected storage system) in the
registry to cache the login credentials for the e-mail accounts defined
in Outlook; see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb432403.aspx.
pstore is no longer available under Windows Vista. The registry keys
are still there but are read-only so Outlook cannot record your login
credentials into those registry keys but cannot update them. Vista
dropped pstore and went to DPAPI. For information on DPAPI, read
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms995355.aspx. DPAPI has been
around since 2001 starting in Windows 2000. The result is that you will
need to supply your login credentials for each e-mail account that you
have defined in Outlook for the first mail poll performed by Outlook.
After the first mail poll, the login credentials are reused so you don't
need to supply them again. However, if you exit and reload Outlook then
you need to supply the login credentials for only the first mail poll.

Outlook 2003/2007 are coded to use either pstore or the newer DPAPI
which means they will run under Vista and pre-Vista versions of Windows.
Mainstream support for Outlook 2002/XP has ended. There will be no
further feature changes, bug fixes, or enhancements to it. That means
it will remain incompatible for use under Windows Vista. Your
Microsoft-based solutions are: suffer with the problem when using
Outlook 2002 on Windows Vista, upgrade to Outlook 2003 or 2007, or use a
different e-mail program that runs properly on Windows Vista.

Read:
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/28
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/vista.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securi...w_to_Windows_Vista#Other_features_and_changes
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb756884.aspx

The PStore keys in the registry are read-only in Windows Vista.
Removing the read-only attribute won't fix the problem. The PStore
interface used by Outlook is not available in Windows Vista. You cannot
manually edit the registry to retrieve or enter the passwords. PStore
isn't just a location in the registry with plain text data. It is a
method of encrypting the passwords using TripleDES that are cached in
the registry in a binary construct. Once a user is logged into Windows,
the CryptoAPI can be used to decrypt that Windows account's cached
passwords from the PStore in the registry. While Windows Vista no
longer provides support for PStore, it is possible to continue
supporting PStore using a program. Alas, there will be nothing
forthcoming as a hotfix or add-on from Microsoft to support PStore
functionality in Outlook 2002 under Windows Vista because Outlook 2002
is no longer supported.

A possible solution is to use a program (as a macro that runs inside of
Outlook) that manages the encrypted password for you in the protected
registry cache. If you don't want to write the macro or cannot find a
free one already written for you, there is OLAutoPW at
http://www.mgsware.de/index.php/OLAutoPW/138/0/#403. I've never used it
(because I don't use Windows Vista). Cost is 10 euro (~$16). It may
also be possible to use AutoIt, AutoHotkeys, or other keyboard macro
programs that can trigger on specific dialog windows to answer the
password prompt for you but then you need to leave them running all the
time and write up the macro that they run along with identifying the
trigger(s) on when and in which window to run their macro.
 

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