How to Edit Mail's Previous Recipients List

[bobdard]

So my dad is finally switching from his beloved gmail.com web app to Mail. There is just one problem. A bunch of his contacts that he normally emails are already in Address Book. However, Gmail has a list of about 300 people that he has emailed in the past. He probably still emails about 100 of them from time to time.. I noticed Mail.app has a "Previous Recipients" list, and you can delete entries from the list or add them to address book. Is there anyway I can manually add some of the email addresses from his Gmail account into that list? In Snow Leopard, the file seems to be located in ~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

I know I can just export all the contacts and put them into Address Book, but he uses his address book's all contacts field on his iPhone, and I don't want to clutter that with those email addresses. Unless there is a way of making an entry that appears in a specific address book group, but not in all contacts.

Anyone have any ideas for either of the two possible solutions? Thanks a lot!

 

[robbieduncan]

In Mail.app: Window->Previous Recipients.

 

[bobdard]

In Mail.app: Window->Previous Recipients.

But that doesn't allow you to ADD recipients... I don't want to add people to address book, I want to add people to that list.

 

[devburke]

You realize that the “Previous Recipients” wouldn’t sync to his iPhone, right?

I don’t think this can be done. If he still wants to e-mail them, I’d say add them to his address book. That’s what it’s there for. The Previous Recipients list isn’t ever synced or anything. Addresses that you really want to make sure you keep should be in the address book.

 

[miles01110]

But that doesn't allow you to ADD recipients... I don't want to add people to address book, I want to add people to that list.

You can't add them, other than sending them an e-mail. You could try adding all the addresses to an email (copy paste) and then saving the draft, but im not sure that saving a draft adds the recipients.

 

[bobdard]

Alright everyone thanks a lot for your suggestions. I understand it wouldn't sync to the iPhone, but that's alright. I suppose I'll tell him to start adding his main email contacts to his address book.

Thanks!