Why Can’t I Delete Old Email Addresses

I love Apple Tech talk and have learned a lot from your tips and now I’m hoping you can help me with a problem I have. I really like that I can start typing a name in the address columns in Apple Mail and the name gets filled in for me. However, I have noticed that even after I delete the name from my Address Book, the name still appears as an option, if I start to type a similar name. Why is this happening and how can I get it to stop?

Thanks for your kind words and we are happy to hear our tips and tricks are helpful to you.

The reason that you are still seeing the address prefill when you start typing an email address is because Apple Mail actually maintains its own contact list. It does this so you can collect email addresses even if they are not in your Address Book. So, if you received an email from a contact in your Address Book for jane.doe@xxx.xom, and you also received and email from jane.smith@xxx.xom, who is not in your Address Book, Apple Mail still remembers both email addresses. So, even if you delete Jane Doe from your Address Book, typing jane, will bring up both options.

Fortunately, this is easy to fix.

When in Apple Mail, look at the top menu bar, and select the Window option. A dropdown menu will appear. On that dropdown you should see an option called, previous recipients.

When you select that, a new window will open that looks like this.

We’ve covered the list to protect the privacy of our email recipients but this window will list all of the email addresses of every email you have received. To find a specific address, you can enter it in the Search field.

Just find the addresses you no longer want and click the Remove From List Button.

That’s all there is to it.

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