Categories
iPhone

Fix GMail Incorrect Password Error on iPhone

imgresOccasionally GMail will stop sending or receiving mail claiming your password is wrong;

"The user name or password for imap.gmail.com is incorrect"

You're positive the password is correct, but that's no help.

To fix this:

  1. Log out of all clients – mobile, desktop, app, browser etc. – that are logged into the GMail account.
  2. Open Safari on the affected iPhone and go to http://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha.
  3. Enter your GMail address and password.
  4. Open the mail app, mail should flow properly now.

For some useful comments on this issue, see http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/971486

 

Note: Is your outbound mail configuration in GMail/EasyDNS messed up?

See Outbound Mail on EasyDNS with GMail.

 

 

Categories
eMail iPhone

Can't Log In to Gmail on an iPad or iPhone

Can't log into your Goggle or Gmail account on an iPhone or iPad?

It could be the your 2-Step-Verification that's causing a "Password Incorrect" error when logging into Gmail, etc.

To fix this, you'll need to visit the Google App Password generator to get a one-time password that will authorize the device.  After that you can use your normal password.

  1.  Log into Google with the relevant account.
  2. Go to https://security.google.com/settings/security/apppasswords.
  3. Select the App and the device you want to generate the app password for, then click GENERATE.
  4. Follow the instructions provided with the generated password that appears. Once you've entered the 16 character one-time password your email will be enabled on that device.

 

Categories
iPhone

Sync an Outlook Contacts Category with your iPhone

This should be a lot easier.  A cynic might think Apple made this difficult on purpose to sell more of their MobileMe service.  But enough of that.

In setting up my new iPhone, I wanted to export a single category of contacts from my standalone (i.e. not connected to Microsoft Exchange) Outlook installation. 

Because I don’t want all of the hundreds of contacts in Outlook, some of which are obsolete but I keep for historical purposes, I have a category called cellphone contacts for those I want to carry with me on my mobile, and it worked fine on my old Motorola cellphone – easy as pie to sync my contacts.

iTunes, however, doesn’t or can’t handle Outlook categories.  So here’s my workaround. 

This was done in Vista with Outlook 2007, and assumes that you do not use Windows Mail or Windows Contacts.  You you may have to adjust for your setup.

 

In Outlook

In Outlook, create a category if you haven’t already and add it to those contacts you want on your iPhone.

Now, still in Outlook, create a new folder called Contacts iPhone or some such.

In Outlook Contacts, create and open a category view of your contacts for the cellphone category.  Press Ctrl-A to select all of them, then drag them to the Contacts iPhone folder.  On the pop-up menu, be sure to select Copy, not Move.

Select File > Import and Export…, then select Export to a file from the list of actions and click Next.

In the Export to a file dialog, select Comma Separated Values (Windows) and click Next.

Select the Contacts iPhone folder in the Select folder to export from list, and click Next.

Now select a place to keep the file (c:\temp\contacts.csv works well) and click Next, then click Finish.

 

In Windows Mail

Now we move to Windows Mail, an application you may never have heard of.

Open Windows Mail, then click the Contacts tab.  If there are no contacts there, you can proceed.  If there are, you have to decide whether you can delete them to proceed or include then in your iPhone contacts.

When ready to proceed, select File > Import > Windows Contacts.  Click CSV (Comma Separated Values in the list, then click Import.  Browse to your .csv file, i.e. c:\temp\contacts.csv, then click Open, Next and Finish in sequence.

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Now we move to iTunes.

 

In iTunes

In iTunes, connect your iPhone, select it in the list of devices in the left pane, then select Info.

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Scroll down to the Sync Contacts section. Check the box and select Windows Contacts from the list.

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Now the the last bit.  Just sync your iPhone and check for your contacts.  If you have a lot of old useless contacts there, you may want to clear them off and start afresh – but that’s your call.

 

Epilogue

There’s no way this should be this much of a hassle, but it seems it must be.

For maintenance, it seems that periodically copying the contacts over the the Contacts iPhone folder in Outlook, saving the .csv, importing to Windows Mail, then syncing the iPhone should be easy enough.  It’s more of a hassle getting is set up and figuring out how to do it.  The ongoing refreshes should be easy enough, albeit annoying.