A little housekeeping in Apple Mail.
If you use Mail, you know that it looks up addressees and displays a menu of possible matches as you type. So if you type in John, it’ll look up all the people with those characters in their name or e-mail address.
If you’re sharp, you’ve probably realized that the people who appear on this list aren’t just the people in your Address Book file. They’re also people who you have sent messages to in the past: previous recipients.
Over time, your list of previous mail recipients gets long and awkward. When you attempt to enter an address, unwanted — or perhaps even invalid — addressees appear. Fortunately, you can clear out these old addresses using the Previous Recipients window.
To display the Previous Recipients window, choose Window > Previous Recipients. As you can see, it lists all people you have sent e-mail messages to. Names preceded with a tiny Address Book icon are people in your Address Book file. You can sort the list by any column; just click it.
To remove a recipient, select his or her entry and click the Remove from List button. The entry disappears. Keep in mind that if you remove an entry with an Address Book icon, you do not remove that entry from your Address Book — just from this list.
To add recipient to your Address Book file, select his or her entry and click Add to Address Book. The entry is created in your Address Book and a tiny Address Book icon appears next to the name in the Previous Recipients list.
Page References
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide includes more information about related topics:
- Creating Messages (including addressing messages), page 425
- Replying to messages, page 430
- Adding Address Book Cards, pages 241-242
- Editing Contact Cards, page 243
This doesn’t work, at least not in Mail 3.2 under Leopard 10.5.2 The previous recipients list repopulates itself as soon as you relaunch Mail.
I just tried this on a Mac running 10.5.2 and it worked as described here. Did you quit Mail and restart it? Don’t know why it isn’t working for you!
doesn’t work for me either os x 10.5.5 – exact behaviour as described by trever
And I just tried it again using Mac OS X 10.5.5 and it still works here.
Questions:
(1) Are you restarting Mail?
(2) Are all the ones you’re deleting coming back?
(3) Do messages TO the people you are trying to remove still exist in your Sent box? I’m thinking that Mail might scan the addresses there to build the list. (But I could be wrong.)
Let us know if you find anything that might explain this. It works as advertised on my Mac. Since I can’t duplicate the problem, I can’t troubleshoot it.
i am restarting mail – and all the ones i am deleting are coming back. so – just for kicks i block deleted the entire previous recipients list – hundreds – if not thousands of them — and used mail – and the recpient list stayed empty. i closed email – and then reopened – and they are all back – hundreds / thousands of them :( however – here is the interesting bit – they haven’t ALL come back – I am missing a few recent ones – and lo when i look at the list – the newly refreshed list all seem to date back to a time in october 2007 – which is about when i had a sever email crash – and i rebuilt mail … so it has got me to wondering – could there be a gost of the old mail build that keeps populating my list ?? I am told that the list is NOT from any mail box scan – and this last experiment seems to support that – because recent previous recipients are not in the list – now that i have deleted them…
any and all help welcome – it is just weird
We’re getting closer to a solution. First thing I’d try is rebuilding the mailbox(es) again.
Also, check your Sent mailbox to see if the people being added back in to the recipents list are people listed in the Sent mailbox.
And yes, you’re right. It IS weird. The weird problems are the worst ones to troubleshoot and resolve.
it isn’t serious enough for me to rebuild it all again … i am wondering if there is a file that could be sitting somewhere that i could just delete – and then when i open mail it just re creates and starts again – kind of like a prefs file ?
and there are entries in the previous recipients list that are neirther in sent – or received in my email
thanks for fast response
With Mail under 10.5.6 I strike this same problem. Actually I have had this since about the start of 2008. I have reported this twice to apple – but still no fix! :((
Find the folder ~Library/Application Support/Addressbook and change permission on the group “everyone” from “No access” to “Read only” and use the option to “Apply to enclosed items”
Yes *THAT* does it!! :) :)
excited to read – but sad to report that i did all this – and then cleared my previous recipient list completely – nothing in it at all. closed mail – and re opended – recipient list was repopulated :(
This is another instance of something that works for me but doesn’t work for everyone. I don’t know why, but unless I have the problem an can explore a fix, I can’t write about it.
Sorry I can’t be more help! This still works for me as written.