Authentication in advanced settings for pop outgoing is grayed out.

Question

I'm not able to send outgoing emails while at work and our network admin told me to use authenticated smtp, port 587. So I went into advanced settings, found the Outgoing using port 587, but the Authentication button is grayed out. Any ideas how to enable it or why it's grayed out?

Answer 1

That didn't work for me either. I couldn't enter a password into the Outgoing Settings field and have it "stick". And I couldn't choose an authentication method.
But now I think I fixed it.
I've been syncing this account with my Mac for a while, and I'm just now getting this server in question to actually use authentication; I'm not sure, but I think I've been doing SMTP over TLS unauthenticated for a while now.
I believe what's happened is that there's some crud deep in my iPhone that's "stuck" on unauthenticated for that mail account. And I think the key is either the "Description" field or "Address" field.
That is, I removed and recreated my account from scratch, on my phone. The account previously had the Description "Personal", and when I recreated it, I once again gave it the description "Personal". This did not solve my problem. I could not get an Outgoing Settings password to stick, and I couldn't choose any form of Authentication.
Now I've recreated the account again from scratch, this time giving it a different Description and Address. Now I'm getting results.
But I'm getting even stranger results. I changed Description and Address, but the Host Name and User Name stayed the same--that must be the "key" in another way. Because now both of the accounts (I didn't destroy the original account settings) have the same description and same everything else.
Anyhow, I think I've cleared out whatever was getting stuck. The result is that if you have a brand-new iPhone, and you point it at a box that asks for AUTH, the iPhone will go through all sorts of hoops and jumps and detect what you have, and allow you to enter a password. But if you get a setting stuck in your iPhone somewhere, you won't be able to undo it without some effort. In my case, making a new mail account with a different "Description" and "Address".
And I've now cleaned everything up--I've removed one of the accounts, so now I only have one (can't tell which one was which, they were both identical), changed all the settings back to exactly the way they used to be, and I can still have an Outgoing Settings password, and choose Authentication. And outgoing mail actually works too...