As Part of Tech Support, many times we are required to find out what the password to email accounts are so that we can either back it up or reinstall the account. The problem is that most people when they originally set up the account, they check the box that says “Remember Password”, then they forget the password they used. A lot of times you will get the “my email doesn’t have a password” or “I just open it, I don’t use a password”, which is just a way of saying that the user doesn’t have a clue about what their password is. FOR THE RECORD: Every email account, no matter who the provider is, has a password.
So what do you do if you don’t know what the email client password is? I found a useful Free utility called Mail Passview from Nirsoft (LINK:) http://www.nirsoft.net/ (http://www NULL.nirsoft NULL.net/)
Mail PassView is a small password-recovery tool that reveals the passwords and other account details for the following email clients:
- Outlook Express
- Microsoft Outlook 2000 (POP3 and SMTP Accounts only)
- Microsoft Outlook 2002/2003/2007 (POP3, IMAP, HTTP and SMTP Accounts)
- Windows Mail
- Windows Live Mail
- IncrediMail
- Eudora
- Netscape 6.x/7.x (If the password is not encrypted with master password)
- Mozilla Thunderbird (If the password is not encrypted with master password)
- Group Mail Free
- Yahoo! Mail – If the password is saved in Yahoo! Messenger application.
- Hotmail/MSN mail – If the password is saved in MSN/Windows/Live Messenger application.
- Gmail – If the password is saved by Gmail Notifier application, Google Desktop, or by Google Talk.
You can download Mail Passview from the Nirsoft Site (LINK) http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mailpv_setup.exe (http://www NULL.nirsoft NULL.net/utils/mailpv_setup NULL.exe)
KNOWN ISSUE WITH TOOL –
Due to the nature of what this tool does, some of the Anti-Virus companies will flag this program as a virus/trojan. This is what is known as a false positive. I very rarely tell anyone to ignore or override a message from Anti-virus, however, in this case as long as you are getting the download from the Nirsoft site, the AV message is a false positive. If you would like to see a small explanation as to why False positives can occur you can read the blog post by Nirsoft about their false positive alerts (LINK) http://blog.nirsoft.net/2009/05/17/antivirus-companies-cause-a-big-headache-to-small-developers/ (http://blog NULL.nirsoft NULL.net/2009/05/17/antivirus-companies-cause-a-big-headache-to-small-developers/)
