Getting rid of old email addresses in Mail

Question

Level 1

9 points

Getting rid of old email addresses in Mail

I have been unable to find a way to remove email addresses so that old, incorrect addresses stop showing up in the address field when I type that person's name. I posted to an old post which has not been answered, but the answer someone else got was: "in Mail go to window menu->previous recipients. delete the obsolete addresses from the list there." So I went to the window menu-previous recipients and deleted obsolete addresses. The deleted addresses still come up. I restarted, but that didn't do it. When I open the previous recipients list, the email addresses that I deleted are gone so there's no way to delete them again. Is there another way to do this? The addresses have also been deleted from my address book, so it's not getting them from there.

24" iMac 2.93Mhz 4G Ram, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Nov 21, 2009 2:58 PM

Reply

Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Nov 21, 2009 3:13 PM in response to RichBP

do you sync your address book with anything? mobileme? if not, the only two places those addresses come from are the address book and the previous recipients list. try deleting the previous recipients list altogether. quit mail and address boom and delete the file /users/username/library/application support/address book/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr then start Mail and see if those old addresses are gone.

Reply

Answer 2

RichBP Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 21, 2009 3:25 PM in response to V.K.

Thanks V.K. I read your previous post, and that's where I learned about deleting in the previous recipients list. The only thing I sync with is my iPod Touch, but I haven't done that since deleting the addresses. If I do as you suggest, won't I lose all my mail and address book information? That would be worse than having to deal with the wrong address situation. Also, when I deleted the addresses, I used the keyboard delete key. I think that's the problem, as I went back and deleted something using the "delete" button on the recipients list page instead, and it worked the way it's supposed to.

Reply

Answer 3

V.K.

Level 9

56,174 points

Nov 21, 2009 3:31 PM in response to RichBP

RichBP wrote:
Thanks V.K. I read your previous post, and that's where I learned about deleting in the previous recipients list. The only thing I sync with is my iPod Touch, but I haven't done that since deleting the addresses. If I do as you suggest, won't I lose all my mail and address book information?

no, that would only clear the previous recipients list. it won't touch the address book. but if you got it fixed then you don't need to do that.

That would be worse than having to deal with the wrong address situation. Also, when I deleted the addresses, I used the keyboard delete key. I think that's the problem, as I went back and deleted something using the "delete" button on the recipients list page instead, and it worked the way it's supposed to.

Reply

Answer 4

RichBP Author

Level 1

9 points

Nov 21, 2009 3:42 PM in response to V.K.

Thanks so much. Worked perfectly. I hadn't had it fixed by the way. All the addresses I had deleted with the keyboard delete key were no longer listed, so I couldn't highlight them to delete using the delete key on that page.
Thanks again for your help.

Reply