Outlook/Office repeatedly prompts for passwords/ won't take them.

Question

I have several users that have been getting password prompts in Outlook desktop (versions 2016, 2019 & 2021) since January. Email is 365 mail hosted by GoDaddy (Exchange Online). Some users at this company have gotten the prompts once, entered the passwords and seem to be okay. But some others get the prompts every few weeks and sometimes more often than that. Sometimes the GoDaddy sign in window comes up when they open Outlook and they are able to enter their password(s) and get in. But other times it looks like it is taking the password but then returns to "needs password". A reboot sometimes fixes this so we can enter the password. Other times, there is no place to enter the password. It looks like it tries to open the GoDaddy login page but it doesn't open. It just flashes in the background. I have been able to address this by deleting all MS related credentials in credential manager. However, these fixes do not last and the problems come back. This does not happen to all users or all machines. I have one user that has a desktop and laptop. The problem reoccurs on the desktop but the laptop has not had the issue at all so far. I do notice that when the user calls me because they can't get into Oultook, I always see that the other apps (Word, Excel) show an exclamation mark by their name and says there is a problem with the account and to log in again. Most times it will not let me log in. The last time this happened, I had to delete everything MS related in Credential Manager, then delete all Accounts under "Access work or school" except the AD account, the reboot the computer. When I opened Outlook and put the first password in (user has 3 email accounts) it gave me an error that the device had been deleted by my organization. I clicked OK and it connected anyway. It was weird because the other two accounts connected without me entering a password. I then went into Word which still showed the account errors for all three accounts. I logged into each one and told it to stay logged into all apps. For now, this is working. But the problems is this keeps happening over and over. I even re-imaged a machine and thought it was okay but a few weeks later it happened again. We have a very strong network with high Internet speeds. I found a suggested registry fix (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover - Create a DWORD named ExcludeExplicitO365Endpoint, set value to 1) which did not help. This is crippling to the business. I appreciate any help. Please note: this is NOT a 365 subscription. These are desktop versions that had been activated for many months even years before this started happening.

Answer 1

By any chance are you using local AD ? and can you confirm whether you have published CNAME record or not ?? if yes what is the CNAME record ? if that dosent fix the problem please edit your local lost file from laptop and add autodiscover autodiscover.outlook.com in localhost file . It will not look anywhere else . also can you confirm whether you are using any crack file or original office