by John Pieza

Have you ever been on your Mac and addressing an email in Mail (its icon is a blue stamp in the Dock) when you notice that two or three email addresses pop up and you can choose one? But then you notice that one of the email addresses is old, and you removed or changed it in Address Book (its icon is the brown book with the @ symbol in the Dock) months ago. Why is it still popping up? And more importantly, how do I get rid of it?

Well, it’s popping up because Mail remembers the addresses of folks that you have written to before and stores them in something it calls the Previous Recipients list. You can view and edit this list from within Mail. Click on the Window menu in Mail and choose Previous Recipients. A new window named Previous Recipients appears with a list of all of the folks you’ve emailed before (pictured below). You can search this list by using the search field in the upper-right corner of the window. Just start typing a name or email address and the list will automatically be pared down based on what you type, i.e. type “john” and you will see all of the names or email addresses that contain “john”. To remove a listing select one of the names or email addresses by clicking (once) on it, then click on the Remove from List button in the lower-right corner of the window.