by Howard B. Richman
“Server denied POP3 access for the given username and password.” This is the frustrating error message when you see when you are attempting to set up a pop account with gmail. Another part of the error is: “Server returned error: “[AUTH] Authentication failed.”
This is when you are attempting to set things up FROM your gmail account to “fetch” or to “check” email from another domain.
I Tried “Everything!”
I spent about 4 hours on a Sunday dealing with this while setting up a fetch email for a client. I was SURE I had the right configuration. I tinkered with the SSL settings and the port settings and the server settings and the username settings and the password. Yes, I even changed the password several times and NOTHING WORKED.
Here is the Solution
The host my client is hosted on is hostgator and their c-panel has this nifty feature called “generate password.” These passwords are super strong and include weird characters like: “{%^*}.(_)” to mention a few. So on a whim, I attempted to change the password to the email account I was attempting to set up (within the c-panel of THAT account) ONE MORE TIME. but this time I made is super simple, non-complicated using just letters and numbers and NO STRANGE CHARACTERS!!!!! WOW. When I saved that password and then entered it into the little box within my gmail settings IT WORKED!!!
I’m mentioning Hostgator just so you see how I came to the conclusion. But I’m aware that most hosts that use the c-panel interface also have the “generate password” button so I suspect that my solution will work for other hosts as well.
I’m posting here just because I had the feeling that others might be suffering with the same situation and I wanted to share what I discovered. You would think that it would be the opposite but apparently, google/gmail likes simple passwords or the “fetch mail” feature cannot be set up.
