Corrupted Previous Recipients in Mail

Hello,
I recently received a "hostile" email from someone and shortly after reading the email I noticed that many of the names in my previous recipients list had been chenged to "Devil". So now when I start typing in a name for a new email, the word "Devil" is substituted for the person I am sending the mail to. I found that I can remove those items from my Previous Recipients list, but I would like to figure out how this guy did it so I can protect myself from having it happen again. (I will start be having this guy filtered out as junk)
Any ideas??
Thanks

There's absolutely no way that just receiving an e-mail could have done such a thing (on a Mac, anyway). There is no code of any kind that could be included in an e-mail and automatically executed in Mail upon receipt. Unless, of course, you've just discovered a previously unknown security flaw in Mail, but that's unlikely.
This hostile e-mail -- what exactly was it? Did it have any attachments, and if so, did you open them? If you did open an attachment on a hostile e-mail, you could consider yourself lucky if all it did was mess up your previous recipient list!

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Somehow a new contact became associated with my email. Now all my email has her name on it. This happens only on my iMac, not on my other Apple devices. I have removed my email from her contact card and deleted her from previous recipients on Mail.

Somehow a new contact became associated with my email. Now all my email has her name on it. This happens only on my iMac, not on my other Apple devices. I have removed my email from her contact card and deleted her from previous recipients on Mail.

Check the settings in the Accounts for Mail.
Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Click on your email Account in the left column > What appears under Full Name in the right column?
If that is the incorrect name you're describing change it to your correct name.

Moving Previous Recipients in Mail to New Computer?

Is there a method of moving the Previous Recipients in Mail from Mac OS X (10.4.11) over to a new MacBook Pro (10.6.4)? I don't want to have to put them all into my address book, but I find it useful to find old names and emails addresses occasionally and would like to keep using it.
Thanks very much for your help.

It sounds like you are doing things the hard way.
Is there a reason you didn't use Setup Assistant? If you still have the older Mac, you can do it with a FireWire cable, or with an Ethernet cable if your old Mac doesn't have FireWire. It makes the whole process a snap. It worked for me when I moved from a 2005 PowerPC eMac running 10.5, to an iMac running Snow Leopard. Everything came right over, including my Previous Recipients. It was "like magic".
You might want to consider starting over with Setup Assistant; I guarantee it will be faster and easier than trying to move items over piecemeal.
Otherwise, just copy over your entire Mail folder from /Users/yourhomefolder/Library. That should get everything Mail-related.

Previous Recipients in Mail.app ought to have automatic management option

Most non-power users do not understand how to use Previous Recipients in Mail.app and there is so much more Apple could do to make that a more useful tool.
When someone changes their email address, Previous Recipients does not automatically update it; so if you don't manually remove the old address, the autofill function will continue to suggest the old address -- this is the source of a huge amount of accidentally misdirected emails.
I wish Apple would offer an option which the user can turn on to automatically offer to delete nonconforming Previous Recipients entries whenever the user changes an address in the Contacts application.
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Use the +Provide Mail Feedback+ option in the Mail menu of Mail.
We're just users here helping other users with problems. Apple doesn't collect suggestions (or much of anything else) here.

Getting rid of Previous Recipients in Mail

On my Mac Mini, running OSX 10.6.8, and Mail v.4.6, I want to get rid of many or all the email addresses in Previous Recipients, because some of them were incorrectly entered by me directly, or I had a typo or old email address in my Address Book and/or the Previous Recipients list. Some of those incorrectly addressed emails just bounced back to me, while others simply vanished into the internet abyss, never to be seen again. They may have inadvertently gone to someone they weren't meant for, and they now likely have my email address. Oh the unfortunate result of addressing errors.
So, to remove the ones I knew/know are typos, or I know they were old or never to be used again addresses, I went to Mail>Window>Previous Recipients and deleted some of them. Very quickly though, I decided to stop and ask this question before deleting anymore: For the people, businesses, etc., I do email and want to keep in my Address Book, is it safe to delete them from Previous Recipients, or will doing so remove them from my Address Book too?
These are the ones with a roll-a-dex like card to the far left side of the names.

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Previous recipients in Mail Address

When I addressed one email, I discovered that I had four addresses for that person and wanted to delete the three now incorrect ones. After I had entered the wrong address, I held down the command key while clicking on it and the pop-up menu appeared so that I could click on "Delete" which just removed the address from the email message. However, when I re-addressed the email with that same address, I held down something while I clicked on the address and the pop-up menu appeared again; this time it had a new option that read something like "Remove address from previous recipients list". Clicking on it removed that incorrect address. However, I have not been able to reproduce that same menu thru which I could remove the other incorrect addresses for that person.
Question: how can I reproduce that menu to remove the incorrect addresses? Or where can I go to find it?
Thanks for your help.
Vernon

In mails menubar, select "window" and then Previous recipients from the drop down list.
Regards,
Captfred

Previous Recipients in Mail will not stay deleted

Email addresses that I have used previously (but don't want) keep autofilling in Mail's TO: field.
I have gone to Window>Previous Recipients and deleted these emails but they autofill again the next time I am on my computer.
How can I permanently delete these pesky Previous Recipients?

raelibark wrote:
Thank you so much for your response. I do want to know what the long term effect of this action will be.
there won't be any. you'll just have to start accumulating "previous recipients" from scratch.
Will I still have the autofill feature in Mail?
yes.
Will the "good" Previous Recipients repopulate after I have emailed them?
yes.

Previous Recipients from Mail Account Not on Mac?

I have two email accounts on my iPhone but only one on my Mac. On my Mac, I see previous recipients from contacts I've emailed on my iPhone from the account that is not on my Mac. I also do not sync my iPhone to my Mac. Why does this happen and how can I disable it? The account I am getting the previous recipients from doesn't exist whatsoever on my Mac and the two accounts have no connections with each other.

One is iCloud which is on the Mac and then both the iCloud and Exchange are in my phone.

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In the Mail application, when I choose Window/Previous Recipients, the list shows only those recipients from emails I sent out since the last time I started up Mail application. However, when I begin to type in the To: box in a new email, a longer list of recipients shows up.
It appears the actual list and what shows up in Window/Previous Recipients don't agree.
This is a problem because some of the email addresses that show up when I begin typing in the To field are old ones that I'd like to get rid of. However, the method I used to use, going to Previous Recipients list and deleting them, won't work because they don't show up there.
This may have begun when I upgraded to Mountain Lion, though I'm not sure that is the case.
My husband is another User on the same computer, and he is not having this problem. The problem must be related to some file associated with my user being corrupted and rewritten new, or something like that. However, the only references I can find for a corrupt Previous Recipients file suggest going to Library/Application Support/Address Book and deleting a file MailRecents-v4.abcdmr. I cannot locate the file, or an Application Support folder for Address Book or Contacts.
Any help would be appreciated.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Show Info
from the contextual menu.* An Info dialog should open.
Does the dialog show "You can read and write" in the Sharing & Permissions section?
In the General section, is the box labeled Locked checked?
What is the Modified date?
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Open a TextEdit window and paste into it (command-V). Select the line you just pasted and continue as above.

Previous recipients list in Mail

We have had a software problem with my wife's mac. I set her up as a user on my iMac, then we wiped her machine and reconstructed. Here is the problem. On her laptop now, there are no previous recipients in Mail. As it turns out, she really needs these. They are on the iMac. I need to move that list from the iMac to her laptop.
I have looked in Library/application support, but can find no entry for Mail or Address book. I know that there must be a file somewhere with this data. Any ideas?

That seems to be just what I need.
Here was (is still) my confusion - when I just navigate to Library/application support - there is no entry for address book, but when I do it as you said, by holding down opt and selecting library from the go menu - there it is.
Why is this?

PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS DISAPPEARED!

Some how, my list of previous recipients in Mail suddenly has been reduced to only those addresses I've emailed in the last four days. That means MANY email addresses are now lost. (Yes, many addresses are in my Address Book, but many were not.) Spent a long time on the phone yesterday with Apple Care rep who could find no fix or reason why. This seems very random... something I could expect on a PC but not on a Mac. Please help!

Hi topspin520, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Unfortunately I've read of this happening before, it's usually Disk or OS corruption that leads to it.
First Quit Mail, then I'd backup these two Mail folders, by right clicking on them in the Finder, then choose Archive/Compress.
Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail
Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail Downloads
(Could be a different folder here if you chose such in Mail Prefs)
Right click on that Mail folder, choose archive, you'll get everything in the folder, and the folder itself in a file called Mail.zip, move it to a safe place, same for the Mail Downloads folder... only the plist is separate.
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
Then Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move these +folder & file+ to the Desktop.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)
Move this Folder to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/
Move this file to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index
Reboot.

Moving Previous Recipients from old Mac to new Mac??

I set up my new MacBook using the Mac Set Up Assistant copying all the information from my MacBookPro. It looks like 95%+ was transferred perfectly. Both Mac's use OS X 10.5.4.
One thing that did not transfer was the Previous Recipients in Mail. All the accounts transferred, all the old mail transferred and even the SPAM filters transferred. But not the Previous Recipient list.
I have a large number of Previous Recipients that I don't really want to have Address Book vCards for, but I do want to be able to search for their e-mail addresses when I need to send something out.
Does any one know:
1- Where the Previous Recipient file is kept?
2- Is there any special concerns in transferring that file to my new MacBook?
Thanks
Tim
Message was edited by: timmilner for clarification`

that file should have transfered. that list is kept in homdirectory/library/application support/address book/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr. If it didn't transfer for some reason, transfer it by hand. there are no problems with doing that.

Previous Recipients

In Mail I can go to Window -> Previous Recipients and see a list of everyone I've ever sent an email to. From this list I can add them to my address book.
I would like to locate the file where this information is kept. My goal is to dump it out into another filtering system, but I can't seem to locate it. I realize that I could add all of the items to my address book and then use a third party program to dump it out, but I'd like to try to just open the file directly.
Does anyone know where the file that stores these addresses is? I thought it might generate the list dynamically from the cached mailboxes, but it comes up way to fast for that. Also it allows you to remove items from the list, so I'm guessing it is in a file somewhere.
Thanks!

I believe the list of Previous Recipients in Mail is stored in the primary Address Book database file located at Home > Library > Application Support > AddressBook > AddressBook.data.
Before manipulating this or any other file within the AddressBook folder, be sure to create a backup of your Address Book data beforehand.

Previous recipients questions

i see the new previous recipients section under Window pulldown and i just want to verify that this is in fact the sum total of all my EMAIL addresses that are available to me in Mac Mail.
also does anyone know how i go about /importing/ email addresses that i have stored from previous email programs.
TIA

Hey Don Hutchinson1!
I have an article here for you that can help you manage your previous recipients list:
Mail (Mountain Lion): Manage addresses in the Previous Recipients list
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11766
Hope this helps! Thanks for coming to the Apple Support Communities!
Regards,
Braden

Previous recipients have ALL been added to my Contacts

Saturday night I had 600-some "cards" in my Contacts, which I store on iCloud (and sync between my desktop Mac and iPhone). Around midnight on Sunday, the number suddenly grew to 2,315--I can see when it happened by comparing backups in Time Machine. The new ones, I'm pretty sure, all came from Previous Recipients in Mail, but I have no idea how. I wasn't using the computer at that time.
Has anyone else experienced such a thing?
(I know that the Previous Recipients window in Mail lets you add individual emails to Contacts. But I have never knowingly done that!)
Thanks.

Head over to Firemonkeys Support: https://firemonkeys.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
Try searching for your issue and select "Submit a Request" if you cannot find your answer (you will need to sign in or create an account).
Once you have done this select "Purchasing/Billing" issue and complete the form. Be sure to include the Order ID and Item name in the form and Game Center profile username (or Facebook profile link) for quick service.

Corrupted Previous Recipients in Mail

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