How do I get rid of obsolete e-mail addresses?

[raylo32]

A friend of mine retired and is down to one personal e-mail address and I have deleted his old work e-mail address and another old and obsolete personal address from his contact. But when I go to type an e-mail and enter his name these old e-mail addresses still appear as choices. How do I make those go away?

 

[sahnert]

Is this in the built-in Mail app? You could check Previous Recipients in the Window menu and see if they are still hanging around there.

 

[raylo32]

Yes, the mac mail app. I don't understand what you are sugesting?? Window menu?? When I go to address an e-mail to Kurt, it gives me 4 choices, only one of which is still his valid e-mail and contained in his contact info. Where and how can I delete these other 3 that are dead?

 

[eRondeau]

It’s right here… this is the MacOS Tahoe 26.1 Mail menu, if you’re using an older version of MacOS it might look different. This will open a window showing every email address you’ve ever sent to. I occasionally go in and delete ALL of them, so future emails will depend on my current Contacts only. If you’ve never cleared these out you may have hundreds of old email addresses in here.

 

[raylo32]

I just updated to Tahoe and got this done. Easy when you know where to look for it. LOL. Thanks, guys.

 

[Big Stevie]

It’s right here… this is the MacOS Tahoe 26.1 Mail menu, if you’re using an older version of MacOS it might look different. This will open a window showing every email address you’ve ever sent to. I occasionally go in and delete ALL of them, so future emails will depend on my current Contacts only. If you’ve never cleared these out you may have hundreds of old email addresses in here.

I've beed trying to find a way of deleting saved old email addresses, so thank you for this ^

 

[calliex]

I did not that this exsisted. Thank You

 

[Gregg2]

It’s right here… this is the MacOS Tahoe 26.1 Mail menu, if you’re using an older version of MacOS it might look different. This will open a window showing every email address you’ve ever sent to.

Yeah, it's a rather clumsy way of handling the task of deleting a single address from the Autofill list. It would be much better to handle that without having to leave the To: box. Just have the list of addresses pop up, navigate to the one you don't want, then hit delete; that'd be much easier.

 

[Fishrrman]

A search revealed this:
=================
macOS Mail: Previous Recipients file location #
Modern versions: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.corerecents.recentsd/Data/Library/Recents/

Recents
Recents-shm
Recents-wal

Legacy versions: ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/

MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
MailRecents-v4.abcdmr-shm
MailRecents-v4.abcdmr-wal

Importing the Previous Recipients to a new Mac is as easy as pasting the first set above and rebooting.
==================
Source: tinyapps.org/blog

So, to be the "test dummy", I tried this:
1. I went to the folder above "~/Library/Containers/com.apple.corerecents.recentsd/Data/Library/Recents/"
2. I located the three files in question, and moved them to the trash
3. I quit Mail.app, then emptied the trash
4. I restarted Mail, and...ALL listings in the "Previous Recipients" window are now... GONE.

Yes, it's a "brute force" job, but this will completely clear out old addresses and let you start over...