Fun With Passwords

The Background

A couple of years ago I bought an iphone and over time I set it up for my day to day email account. In addition to my day to day account, which is an MSN Hotmail account, I have two other email accounts, one a personal Gmail account and another Gmail account set up in conjunction with the my website that I use for my hobby. Eventually I set all three up on my iphone, and all was well.

My two personal email accounts have different (and somewhat complex) passwords, which I try to change periodically. Because the hobby account is used strictly for discussing the hobby, I have seen no need to strengthen or change that password.

The Problem

After a prolonged period of time on the old passwords, I decided last month to change the passwords on my two personal accounts. Let the fun begin.

Everything seemed to be ok. I was getting mail on the Hotmail account and because I don’t used the personal Gmail account much it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t getting mail there.

I did begin getting an indicator that the “exchange” password was incorrect, and had tried a couple of times to fix it, but it never seemed to get fixed. I didn’t realize there was a significant problem until I tried to respond to an email on the Hotmail account and found that I could not send anything.

Simple enough, though, right? Just plug in the new passwords. Tried that – the Hotmail password did not work, the Gmail password did not work.

Hmmmm.

Began doing some research on the web and ran into a ton of other people with similar issues, and it seems that every proposed solution is different.

I have no idea what “exchange” is. Or where it came from. But email on my iphone was never really that important to me, so I made a few half-hearted efforts at trying to figure this thing out.

The Solution

Last night I finally said, enough. Fix it. I googled the Hotmail problem once again and found a potential cure which required me to make a change to my Gmail account. Huh? What sense does that make? Go to google's Gmail to fix MSN Hotmail on my Apple device?

Well, I followed the procedure and voila, my Hotmail became accessible on my iphone once more. Yeah, but the Gmail account still does not work. Back to google and I find that I need to install a specific application password for gmail on my iphone and that I can get it from my Gmail account (not my Gmail password, but something different).

Got it. Gmail began working again. Of course I never did have a problem with my hobby based Gmail account because I never changed the password.

So now I can access all three of my email accounts on my iphone once again.

Well, until the next day!

The New Problem

Got up this morning, turned on my iphone and found a demand for an “exchange” password. Could not get past that to access anything on the phone. It’s like the phone is completely locked and won’t work without that password.

The Final Solution (that just sounds wrong)

Back to google – back to Gmail – and I am allowed to download a new password for “exchange” to my iphone. But how will I access it if I cannot open any aps?

As it turns out, the new password just popped up on the iphone screen. Plugged it in to the “exchange” password request, and once again we are running on all 8 cylinders.

Hopefully this will last more than 24 hours this time. And I still don't know what "exchange" is.