Unable to Delete Suggested Email Contacts in Mail on iPhone

Unable to Delete Suggested Email Contacts in Mail on iPhone.  

I thought I should post this here to help others who have the same problem.

Normally deleting a suggested contact that appears in one's suggested email contacts list is easy - start typing the contact's name into the "To" field in a new email.      Recent contacts/suggested autofill addresses will appear with a lower-case "i" in a blue circle next to them;

Tap the i next to the old email address you'd like to remove.      

In the window that opens, tap “Remove from Recents” or “Delete Contact” to stop the iPhone from suggesting this email address in future.      

However, if only some of the recent addresses have that blue i. There seems to be no way to remove ones that don't have it and the addresses also don’t appear in the address book so you can't delete them there. This can happen if one is not using an Apple mail or iCloud account. (But the unwanted address still appears in all one’s accounts).

Solution (after much searching). Mail app keeps a list of often-used email addresses. The problem comes when Mail keeps suggesting an old email address that’s no longer active. Even if you’ve deleted it from the address book entry for that contact, it may still stick around.  Reason - it is probably hiding in the iCloud address book, which you may not be using or have turned off. 

Turn on iCloud contacts in Settings|Passwords and Accounts.  

Now go to address book and search for the obsolete contact.

If it appears, click on the contact and then Edit (top right) when it opens.

Scroll down to the very bottom and hit “Delete Contact”, twice.

Then go back and turn off iCloud contacts in Settings again

(If the address does not appear this way, I have no other solution, except complain to Apple about their poorly designed mail app.)