Change Outlook password (Outlook 2003)
When you add an email account in Outlook 2003, you need to supply at that time the email address you want to setup, as well as the current password for that account. Most of the time, your password can be set and changed by going through the email provider (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail, your school or university, your company, or your internet provider - typically), and you can change your email account password from a web browser (or by asking your system administrator or hosting company to do so). So what happens to Outlook 2003 when the password it has on file no longer matches? Well, you will receive an error message telling you that Outlook cannot send or receive emails. In this tutorial, we will explain how to change your Outlook 2003 password, which is done in under a minute.
How do I change my Outlook 2003 password?
Follow these simply steps to update your credentials inside Outlook 2003:
- First, you will need to launch Outlook 2003 (you can in some cases change your email account password through the Windows Control Panel, but this depends on too many settings to be a reliable approach). Once in Outlook 2003, click on the "Tools" menu, and choose "Options":
- The Options dialog will open: select "Mail Setup", and click on the "E-mail Accounts" button:
- A new dialog window will open, and display a series of options: choose "View or change existing e-mail accounts" (which should be selected by default), and click "Next".
- You will then see a listing of all the email accounts you currently have inside Outlook 2003; double-click on the email account whose password you want to change (which amounts to the same thing as selecting the email account and clicking on Next - only quicker).
- The next screen will display the most important properties for the selected email account; under the section labeled "Logon Information", you will find two text fields: "User name" contains your email address, and "Password" stores your current password for that account.
- To change your Outlook 2003 password for the selected email address, just select the current password and type over it the new password; since you cannot see the text you are typing inside a password field, pay particular attention to avoiding any typos.
- Once you are done changing your Outlook 2003 password, you can optionally click on the "Test Account Settings" for good measure: if you do, Outlook will try to send and receive a test email to yourself using the new password you just changed to.
- If the "Remember password" checkbox is checked, Outlook 2003 will automatically store your password and supply it to the mail server whenever needed. This is a handy option that spares you from having to manually enter your email account password.
- Once you have successfully changed your password, click on the "Next" button: Outlook 2003 will save your new password and bring you to the final screen of the wizard.
- Click "Finish" to return to Outlook 2003 and your emails.
This is all you need to do to change your Outlook 2003 password! To get the most of your favorite email program, be sure to check our extensive Outlook 2003 Tutorial.
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