Mail.app keeps asking for passwords

[skasmo]

Every time I restart my computer, or come back to it after an extended period of time my email will ask me for my passwords. I have saved them a bunch of times to the keychain, but it still insists in asking me. I have also tried disk repair and still no luck.

[Turboladdade]

Mail.app might be checking mail exactly at a moment when either A: your mail server provider is down, or B: your internet service and/or home network is down or slow. These network errors or interruptions can be ever so brief, but may be happening frequently. Mail.app could be getting an error and doesn't know why so maybe it assumes your password is bad.

Next time this happens try clicking "cancel" on all the new requests for passwords, clicking the "take all account online button" next to the inbox, and clicking Get Mail again and see what happens.

[chasm]

One solution I've found often works with minimum inconvenience is to simply delete the keychain, forcing it to create a new one.

You might also try simply choosing "Keychain first aid" from the Keychain Access application in your utility folder. Let it run, log out, log back in and see if that improves things.

If not, you may want to consider deleting the keychain (again, you do this through Keychain Access). You'll need to re-log in to any sites for which you had saved passwords, as they're all gone now, but your email program will probably ask you ONCE to reinput your password, and assuming you do so correctly, will not ask again.