Errant Autofill Mail Addresses

OK. I have spent the best part of an hour deleting old email addresses from the list brought up by clicking on 'Previous Recipients'. However when I next open up my Mail program all the deleted addresses have re-apeard and the Previous Recipients list is just the same as before.

What am I doing wrong? Is there some special way I should close the 'Previous Recipients List' to save my new list?

No, there shouldn't be anything special to do, & you can remove more than one at a time...

http://email.about.com/od/macosxmailtips/qt/et_clean_autoc.htm

Only thing I can figure is that your ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.data is damaged, locked, or you lost permissions to it, then it could be one of the many caches there also.

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go.

Try removing a couple in Safe Mode, does that stick?

Sorry. Repairing Permissions didn't work, although there were a lot of repairs carried out.

Can my problem have anything to do with iCloud? I have an iMac, iPad and iPhone all syncing through iCloud which I only just joined.

You mentioned that my ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.data may be damaged how do I get to this and is it possible that I could straighten it out.

Also you mentioned my caches. How do I remove these.

How long do they take to come back? It may be Syncing I guess, but you could test by disconnecting from the Internet.

They are there again as soon as I shut down & open the Mail application. Perhaps 30seconds.

Not caused by Syncing as I tried whilst disconected from the internet and it made no difference.

Do a get info on this file, se what Rights & priviliges are & if it's Locked, also ocheck the folder above it.

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.data

I'm sorry. I dont know how to find the file you requested I look at.

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.data

How do I locate it?

In Finder's Menu, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and paste in this line...

~/Library/Application Support/

There should be a Window open which should list...

AddressBook.data

As well as other files.

The Reply is 'This folder cannot be found'

However when I drill down into my Hard Drive I find I have lots of duplicated files beginning with Address. These are located in a folder called 'Previous Systems'. In Previous Systems there are two folders: 2007-12-17_1550 and 2008-02-16_0533 .

Within these two folders are further folders both containing the following folders; 'Applications', 'Library', 'private', System' and 'Users'.

Have I got two versions of the Address App working at the same time?

Previous Systems is from Archive & Installs.

I'd get EasyFind...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11076

Here's a direct download link to EasyFind 4.0 which runs in 10.3.9 & up...

http://www.devon-technologies.com/files/legacy/macosx1039/EasyFind.dmg.zip

From this page,

http://www.devon-technologies.com/support/faqs.php?p=default&cat=19

Freeware applications:

* EasyFind 4.0

* PhotoStickies 5.6

* ThumbsUp 4.3

* XMenu 1.8

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/8707

Use it to search your whole drive for case insensitive & show invisibles...

AddressBook.data

Hopefully we'll find AddressBook.data.beforesave also & of some size.

I updated my Address Book with an extra address. Then I used EasyFind to search for any file with Address in its title. These are the ones that came up with the time set as the time I carried out my address addition.

file://localhost/Users/robertkirk/Library/Application%20Support/AddressBook/

file://localhost/Users/robertkirk/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.AddressBo ok.sync.001b63b0d647.plist

file://localhost/Users/robertkirk/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plis t

file://localhost/Users/robertkirk/Library/Application%20Support/AddressBook/Addr essBook-v22.abcddb

file://localhost/Users/robertkirk/Library/Saved%20Application%20State/com.apple. AddressBook.savedState/

Is it possible that the ones ending in .plist are the ones we are looking for?

There weren't any .data files