BT Business email problems

At a nearby resident's club they've started having problems this morning.

They run Outlook 2003 accessing email at a btconnect.com em,ail address.

This morning all attempts at sending or receiving email failed with an authentication failure, check/enter username or password. They've not changed from yesterday when it worked.

Clearly it could be a problem with the mail servers. They've been migrated (last June) to an Office 365 service, with pop.outlook.com and smtp.outlook.com as the mail servers.

All the settings look ok.

Anyone know if there is a current problem or what might be the cause of this issue?

Running fine here. Have checked several UIDs.

What are the full settings in use? What Port in in use for incoming and outgoing? What encryption?


I am using Outlook 2010 but have found on occasion tha an older version of Outlook/OE would change the non-standard ports!

As far as I could see at a quick look they seemed correct, as per the pages on BT's web site.

I'm not sure if Outlook 2003 is at SP3 which AIUI it needs to be. I may be able to have a longer look at it tomorrow afternoon.

In 995 and Out 587 with TLS

Can you access it from: https://login.microsoftonline.com/

Many mail servers have moments of flakiness occasionally.

Primitive way of confirming would be trying TELNET to POP3 & SMTP servers.

It was failing in the morning and when tried again in the afternoon it was still failing. Doesn't sound like the occasional flakiness.

log into the web interface - BT related email systems have a habit of only putting information about your account being compromised onto the web login screen of webmail.

Besides, it validates your password if you can use it on the webmail version.

Replying to this one as it led to the solution.

Outlook 2003 was still failing authentication this afternoon, >24 hours since the first occasion.

I went to https://login.microsoftonline.com/ and tried to login. It responded that too many attempts had been made with an incorrect password and presented a login with Captcha. Logged in and was able to see the email waiting in the Inbox.

Then reset the Outlook password and, lo and behold, Outlook now connected to the email servers and downloaded emails.

What I now believe happened is that an authentication failure occurred (not that uncommon), and someone tried a different password, probably several times. In doing so Office 365 'locks' the account after a certain number of failed attempts and will only 'unlock' after a Captcha authenticated login, something that Outlook can't do.

I've now found

In reference to support.microsoft.com/kb/2412085:

Scenario 4: The account is locked out
To determine whether an account is locked out, sign in to the Office 365 portal (https://portal.microsoftonline.com). You may receive a message that resembles the following:

You've tried to sign in too many times with an incorrect email address or password.

To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods:

* Wait 15 minutes, and then try again.
* Have the Office 365 admin reset the password. This unlocks the account.
* If you are signing in by using an incorrect password on a mobile device, update your password to the correct password on the mobile device.

Be aware of the following password lockout policies:

* After 10 unsuccessful sign-in attempts with an incorrect password, you will have to solve a CAPTCHA as part of the sign-in process.
* After another 10 unsuccessful sign-in attempts with an incorrect password and after you correctly solved the CAPTCHA, you'll be locked out for 15 minutes.
* Additional sign-in attempts with an incorrect password results in an exponential increase in the lockout time period.

I will educate the office folk at the resident's club accordingly.