Deleting E-mail addresses from MacMail autocomplete list

Like many other emailing applications Mac OS X Mail is pretty good at remembering the email addresses of people you usually communicate with. As soon as you start typing it in the To: field of an email, a few suggestions will come up. It is pretty useful expect when you want to get rid of those addresses that you don’t use very often.

Fortunately, there’s a way to delete old (or unwanted) addresses from the auto-complete list in Mac OS X Mail. The new address will be remembered automatically, and soon the auto-complete feature is as useful as ever again.

Delete an Email Address from Auto-Complete in Mac OS X Mail

To remove an email address from the auto-complete list in Mac OS X Mail:

• Start typing the recipient’s address or name in a new message.
• Select the desired address from the auto-complete list as if you’d compose an email to them.
• Click the small down arrow in the recipient.
• Select Remove from Previous Recipients List from the menu.

You can also search for the unwanted address directly in the previous recipients list:

• Select Window | Previous Recipients from the menu in Mac OS X Mail.
• Highlight the address you want to remove.
  • You can highlight multiple addresses by holding down the Command key.
• Click Remove from List.

Clean up Mac OS X Mail’s Auto-Complete List

To clean up or empty the auto-complete list of previous recipients’ addresses in Mac OS X Mail:

• Select Window | Previous Recipients from the menu.
• Click on the Last Used header so the arrow points downward.
• Make sure no entry is highlighted.
• Hold down the Shift key.
• Click on an address last used a year ago.
  • Of course, you can choose a different interval and select all addresses not used in the past month, for example.
• Verify all entries not used in the last year are highlighted.
• Click Remove From List.