Recently in Apple Mail on Mac OS X El Capitan I received a strange error message when trying to add a Charter email account for a client: “Mail account already exists”. I followed the steps that Charter recommends but I could not get the account to add.
After some troubleshooting, here’s how I finally solved it. Before you implement this fix, verify you have the correct email and password by logging in to your email providers website (for Charter, it’s ). Once you’ve done that, head to the solution below. Solution. Head to the Apple logo in the top left corner System Preferences. Select iCloud (third row, first icon).
Fixes For When Mail Keeps Crashing on macOS High Sierra. When an Application such as Mail crashes on your MacBook, chances are that there is something wrong with the preference list files (called.plist files) of the application. This situation is true with all Mac Apps.
Sign out of your iCloud account by clicking Sign Out. Re-add your mail account.
Sign back into your iCloud account Why this works I believe causes the problem, which syncs lots of data, including internet accounts, across multiple devices. The email account in question is somewhere in the iCloud data trying to sync, but it’s stuck in limbo. However, disabling iCloud Keychain by itself does not fix the problem, leaving the only solution to be to sign out altogether. Mac OS X Versions this affects This bug affects all versions of Mac OS X El Capitan — 10.11.0, 10.11.1, 10.11.2, 10.11.3, 10.11.4, 10.11.5, and 10.11.6.
If you find that this bug affects other versions of OS X or have a better workaround, please leave a comment below. Known Mail Providers Affected. Comcast.
Charter. Great job figuring this out. I have been struggling with this for 2 months, since replacing my computer. Every time I would restart Mail, it would ask for password of the email account who’s ID is used with iCloud. Using Connection Doctor would allow me to work around it, but nice to have a fix.
![Mac sierra asking for password hotmail login Mac sierra asking for password hotmail login](/uploads/1/2/5/3/125356058/590152957.png)
One additional point to add to this solution: for me, the password problem affected both my iMAP and SMTP passwords, but only the iMAP one got reset at first, so while logged out of iCloud, be sure to send a message from the problem account to stimulate a check of the SMTP password, so that can get set, too. Then use Connection Doctor to check that they are all good before restarting iCloud. I’ve been trying to sort out this problem on my partner’s macbook (2013) for hours. It started off as an email account that was offline and couldn’t or wouldn’t change to online again. It was running el capitan so I upgraded to Sierra hoping the problem might be fixed but it wasn’t. Then thought I’d delete and recreate the email account and hit the account already exists problem Now really irritated that the fix was so quick and easy;-)) but thanks very much for posting this – it was really helpful. Pretty sure now that the original problem was also caused by iCloud/keychain issue.
Just wish I’d found your solution sooner! Many thanks again. Spent 3 hours on this ugh. Firstly, last week or so was getting icloud error. When i entereded my apple id as it stated below the form user name, i was entering my appleid. But then would try to sign me up, I already had an icloud that i registered on the web a few years ago. Two things to note you after you sign out YES you can enter your existing icloud login @icloud.com DESPITE it saying ‘appleid’ secondly when i click on sign out it makes it appears it crashes, just close and reopen, had to do this 3 times, finally had me logged off, THEN was able to login as mentioned above thirdly, my icloud is not registered with my phone.
For now I’ll continue to use apple id as I don’t want to mess with my phone at this point to switch to icloud login This was all unnecessary, as only had to do because mac sierra had kept prompting me icloud credentials are wrong. This is really a bad way to roll out a new feature.
Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Just to make you familiar with this largely encountered issue if in case you are an Outlook for Mac 2011 mail client user and as like the majority of users you also have set up a password protection on your Mac machine or MacBook Pro whatsoever it is for the sake of safety purpose then there are numerous possibilities that you might get into trouble. Since it has been detected from a number of cases that after a while Mavericks start keeps on forgetting your PASSWORDS for multiple accounts and in response asking you constantly to manually enter the PASSWORD thru prompt up messages. The actual reasons behind this problem could be when your machine wakes up from sleep mode or when being inactive for a long period specifically at the time when you are making use of other programs though haven’t used Outlook for Mac meanwhile.It appears in most of the systems wherein Outlook might suffer from Infections with New Apple’s App Nap application-handling service. The facility is supposed to let a program to stop from carrying out when running in the background, making the performance faster for focus applications additionally to increase battery life. Unluckily this service may force Outlook to disconnect and further non authentication issue with configured mail-servers.
Now to avoid this you will have to turn-off the NAP app for the programs. This can be done checking the Prevent App NAP option, check the image below Other than this NAP app you could have issues with account keychain entries that Outlook utilized to save your login credentials. In case any keychain entry gets damaged it won’t work properly together with the same program that created it. Try these steps to remove keychain entries and have Outlook in recreating them. Open Keychain Access utility (in the Applications Utilities folder). Opt for “login” keychain.
Look out for mail service (ie, the server name) of the account you have configured in Outlook. Choose displayed keychain entry, and push Delete key to remove it.
The moment you’ll finish, Open Outlook when being asked enter your password for server. Now an all new keychain entry will be generated in order to replace the one that’s been deleted.
Outlook should be able to access your servers again without prompting to Login. In the event if the above settings didn’t work users can look for migrating Outlook for Mac 2011 mail to Windows Outlook with external application like Outlook Mac Exporter.