One of our Hotmail accounts stopped downloading messages on Saturday morning (Aug 14). This happened on 2 Android phones running K-9, a Samsung S20 with the latest K-9, and a Samsung A8 running an older one with the old interface. Both seem to have stopped at the same time, on the same account.
We have it set up as POP, I think using hotmail.com for the POP server (but whatever it was, there was no error when testing the “Incoming Server” under Settings). Tried changing the server to the office365.com one but that didn’t work either.
We can see the emails through the browser, and I confirmed that allowing POP was still checked. Meanwhile on my Windows PC, using The Bat!, the old POP settings are working fine for this account and it downloaded about 15 messages newer than on K-9.
[added: when I refresh using the newer K-9 on the S20, there’s no error generated; when we refresh using older K-9 on the A8, there’s an error under Inbox in the folder list, “-ERR Server Unavailable. 21”, I assume it’s not a straight server down issue, because at the same time I can access from The Bat on Windows.]
I thought maybe an application password is now required, but I’ve been looking for messages and haven’t found anything. Don’t want to mess with this too much without knowing where I’m going.
Is anyone else having this problem? Is it an issue with K-9, or do I need to keep looking?
Given that this account stopped working with the old K9 - which hasn’t been touched in a couple of years - in addition to the new release, I think it’s fair to say that this isn’t due to a change in K9.
I suspect that issue is that your hotmail account has been switched to require OAUTH2 by default. M$ appears to be instituting this requirement on their accounts on a rolling bases, rather than all accounts at once.
As K9 doesn’t support OAUTH2 you need to use the M$/hotmail facility to generate an “app password” and use that password in K9 in place of your account login password. You can use your search engine of choice to find links to how-tos for the bits you need to make this work.
It looks like “the bat” email client supports OAUTH2, which is why it works with that account.
Thank you. I ran into OAUTH2 requirement when I tried to add a gmail account a year ago (thread here somewhere). I was reluctant to just jump in because when I searched (DuckDuckGo ) I couldn’t find any references to “my Hotmail stopped working… use OAUTH2” in other threads. Will give it a try and report back.
[added: BTW am I right the K-9 documentation is not kept in sync with the new release? It doesn’t mention the possibility of OAUTH2 requirements, but also says automatic polling goes down to 5min, which I read in another thread is no longer allowed]
Thanks, gmail was easy. Finding how to create an app password for Hotmail is proving more of a challenge (on top of everything else, my own hotmail account I would use for testing and not care if I broke it, is still working fine in K-9.
I found an article on creating app password for hotmail but it doesn’t match the actual hotmail interface. Still working on that.
) I couldn’t find any references to “my Hotmail stopped working… use OAUTH2” in other threads. Will give it a try and report back.