sign in to Outlook

Question

sign in to Outlook

Edward Corcoran 20

I am having a terrible time on this. Spent hours going in circles. Was on chat and it got disconnected. How to I find out what is goin on?

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Answer 1

Chloe-V 13,960 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Edward Corcoran

I’m sorry you’ve had such a frustrating experience, especially after spending hours trying to resolve this and having the support chat disconnected.

Could you please clarify what happens when you try to sign in to Outlook?

Are you using Outlook in a web browser, the desktop app, or the mobile app?
Is this a personal Outlook.com/Hotmail account or a work or school account?
After entering your password, does the page keep loading, return to the sign-in page, remain blank, or ask you to sign in again?
Can you access the account on another device or through Outlook.com?

These details will help us better understand the issue and provide the appropriate next steps.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Edward Corcoran 20 Reputation points

2026-10-12T20:47:28.9233333+00:00

Hi Chloe

Thanks for the answer. It seems my problem is solved but I don't know quite what is happening. I went to FastMail on setting up a connection and they gave me a special password to use. then I went to Outlook and I got logged in OK. I don't know if it used my new password or not and on the Outlook website I cannot find what password it is using for me. It lets me sign in with my Microsoft passkey, so I seem to log in OK. I tells me it cannot find a Microsoft account but does find my [Moderator Note: Personal Info Removed]@corcorans.org account and sends me to my Microsoft account. So it all seems a bit confused but seems to be working.thanks for keeping at this,

[Moderator Note: Personal Info Removed]
Chloe-V 13,960 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-10-12T23:37:14.2066667+00:00

Hi @Edward Corcoran

Please note that our forum is a public platform, and we will modify your question to hide your personal information in the description. Kindly ensure that you hide any personal or organizational information the next time you post an error or other details to protect personal data.

Thank you for the update. I’m glad to hear that you can now sign in and that everything appears to be working.

The special password generated by Fastmail was most likely an app-specific password used to connect your Fastmail mailbox to the Outlook application. It is separate from both your normal Fastmail password and your Microsoft account password.

The Microsoft passkey is another sign-in method that can replace entering a Microsoft password, so Outlook.com will not display or reveal a password when you use it. Your custom-domain email address may also be registered as the sign-in address for a Microsoft account, even though the mailbox itself is provided by Fastmail. This can make the sign-in process appear confusing because the same email address is being used with two separate services.

If Outlook continues to send and receive your Fastmail messages normally, no further action should be required.