IPhone Mail 'previous recipients'-can't delete

If one mistakenly tries to send a message to an e-mail address that does NOT exist, that recipient continues to show up as a future possible address when creating new e-mails. In other words, when I later create a new e-mail and start typing the person's name, in the field below where it is searching through my Contacts, it will ALSO show that previous incorrect address. On my computer, one can go into Mail>Window>'Previous Recipients', and I could delete it...however...there is no way to do that on the iPhone. Note that I have already tried to reset my iPhone by deleting the Mail account and then reactivating...and I have also tried to go to a Mac that syncs with the iPhone to go into the Mail program and delete it from 'previous Recipients', but those do not show up. Thanks. Ken

since you have a mac you can do this:
1. Quit Mail, AddressBook, and probably all other apps would be a good idea.
1. Delete the ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/mailrecents-v4.xxxxxx file
2. When deleting this file, I had to type my admin password.
3. Restart Mail
4. Go to the Previous Recipients window.
5. Select one previous recipient and delete it, or do the following to empty your list:
6. Go to Edit>Select All
7. Delete the entire list
Now when you quit Mail and then restart it, the list should stay empty.
I just searched it for you and this is what others did. I like keeping all other recipients in my phone , if I use them or not.

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Address Book Contacts and Mail Previous Recipients Missing/Empty/Deleted

At one point yesterday, I was happily catching up on some email using Mail. All was well. I toggled a message as Junk and went to forward it to [email protected], which was, of course, in my Previous Recipients list. Only this time it wasn't. I noticed, too, in iChat, that all of my buddies had reverted to their IM screen names from their normal Address Book-based First Name/Last Name. So I opened Address Book (which had not been running), and it was empty!
To the best of my recollection, though I have a .Mac account, there was no syncing that occurred during any of this. Worse, when I did a manual Sync to see if .Mac would restore my contacts, it didn't. My Address Book remained empty. Fortunately, it didn't propagate its emptiness to .Mac, which I checked via the Web.
When I fired up my spare iBook, everything seemed fine, and a sync there didn't blow away anything.
I found a few posts that recommended replacing my now empty AddressBook.data file with AddressBook.data.beforesave, which was large enough to seem like it might still have a lot of my contacts. I did this, and my Address Book and Previous Recipients were partially restored. The only problem is that the beforesave file was dated June 2004 and is missing all contact information over the past year and a half.
What the heck happened?! Is there any better solution out there? Any thoughts on why .Mac wasn't able to restore the file? Also, what does Previous Recipients have to do with the Address Book data files?

Is your iBook the way you want it? all of your addresses? if so maybe you could back up that database and replace the old one thats fallen to pieces. If you try that though theres no real chance I think of rebuilding that old one as far as I know. My entouage database was an all in one type of deal. when it fell apart, you lost everything. I went to the mac mail and address book after that. everything is in seperate folders with that stuff. usually I've only seen this on older running installs of OS X. Like there is a bunch of directory probs. then things gradually get goofier over time.
Thats strange it doesn't want to import contacts to your computer.
I'll ask around

I delete mail previous recipients to have them repolulated again by is it mobileme?

I delete my entire mail previous recipients list to find that they have been repolulated again. What is doing this? How can I stop it happening? I want to delete forever some previous recipients. I have deleted the mail recents folder off a backup I did some time ago. Will that fix the problem?

Launch the Mail app on your Mac and go to Window>Previous Recipients.

I have 28,000 unread e-mails on my iPhone 5. How can I delete without having to select each one under edit?

I have 28,000 unread e-mails on my iPhone 5. How can I delete without having to select each one under edit?

Sounds like the email account is a POP account and if so, you have 28K emails that remain at the incoming mail server for the account. If all received email has been downloaded with the email client on your computer used for accessing the account, delete all email that remains at the incoming mail server. You can do this via webmail access for the account using a browser on your computer.
Folllow this by deleting and recreating the account on the iPhone.

Managing Mail PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS?

i have a MBP (ML) a Mac Pro (Lion) and an iPhone.
i want to get my Mail > Window > PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS into Mac Contacts ("Address Book" in Lion) so that i can send emails from all these devices to people that are already in this database which appears to be isolated on each computer and which does not appear to exist on an iPhone when you reply to an email from there (curious if that is correct).
anyway, i am trying to add these Previous Recipients and i am about 2/3 the way through on the MBP and it appears to me that the only way to do this is to ADD all the contacts you want to the CONTACTS application and to then SORT them in the Contacts Application. for instance, if i have my brother's mailing address in Contacts and i add the EMAIL address for him i then have two Contacts for my brother and i have to manually go in and copy the email address, paste it into the original contact for him and then delete the "added" contact. i could do this by printing out all my Previous Recipients but at least THIS WAY WHEN I SEE HIS NAME IN THE PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS AT LEAST I KNOW HE HAS BEEN ADDED.
Also, from what i can tell there is no way to ADD the Previous Recipient to a GROUP so you have to create a Smart Group in Mountain Lion Contacts Application that shows all "Contacts not in Group" so that you can then assign each of the Contacts you added to a Group (a Smart Group for this does not work in Lion).
ANYWAY - assuming i do this - i believe that i am seeing that the PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS on my MAC PRO don't know that they have been added to the Contacts database is that correct? or is this just an unfortunate consequence of the fact that my Mac Pro cannot upgrade to Mountain Lion? I mean, i have a ton of Previous Recipients in this database (way more than on my MBP) but i would hate to have to add and then sort alll my Previous Recipients again if they have already been added on the MBP. you follow?
is there something that i am not understanding or is there some method to smash these two databases together or export them or something a little less tedious than this dump and sort method that i describe?
TIA
managing Mail PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS?

hi carolyn. thanks. always good to hear from you.
i think i was not very clear.
the problem i am having is that this information is important for me to have on all my devices. right now it only resides on one (mac pro) and in order to get it to the others i apparently need to manually enter the data into Contacts.
but over the long term there is an issue as to how to maintain this data.
i can get in here by doing Window > Previous Recipients and i can manually transcribe these entries one by one into Contacts and then i can delete them from within this UI. but -
what happens when i continue to use mac mail? ostensibly the entries will get repopulated when i reply to an email (unless i turn it off) and if i turn it off i would have to actually check to see if a new email was coming from a new address that i needed to add to contacts.
is there a creative way to checkmark that the previous recipient has been added to contacts so that i won't have new email addresses from this same entry added when i reply but when i go to add NEW email recipients to Contacts so that i can maintain my contact database i can only add the NEW email addresses that have not been ported to Contacts....?
you know what i mean?

Mail Previous Recipients List only shows today's recipients

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.

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There are two ways to get rid of them on your iPhone:
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2. Plug your iPhone into your computer, open iTunes, click on your iPhone's row on the left, go to the "Photos" tab on the top right, and uncheck "Sync Photos", then click "Apply" in the lower right.

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Mail app's Previous Recipients-how to delete the file?

I have tried, unsuccessfully, to Remove From List all the items in Previous Recipients, but they always return after I quit Mail and relaunch. I need to find the file that contains these stragglers and delete them forever. Anyone know where it is to be found?

Daniel,
The source of the Previous Recipient data is the AddressBook folder within the Application Support folder of your User folder (Home)/Library. It is in a file named MailRecents. In the Finder, you can delete that, but be sure for any backup source you may have in operation.
If only due to some corruption, the date last modified will stale on the MailRecents file.
Ernie

TS3276 No matter what I do (Previous Recipients), I cannot delete an old e-mail address

I have one e-mail address, that no matter what I do, I cannot delete it from my list. I have tried previsous recipients, but it won't show up so that I can delete it. But, whenever I send an e-mail to this person, their old address comes up as a choice. I want it to go away.

That was the problem. I thought the only way to get rid of it was in "Previous Recipients". Thanks.

How do YOU manage Mac Mail Previous Recipients?

i am running into a bit of a workflow issue as i try and finally conquer my contact/database. (BTW i am on Lion on the Mac Pro and ML on the MBP FWIW.)
i am trying to figure a way to either add NEW EMAIL ADDRESSES to my Mac Contacts/Address Book or to add these to my CARDSCAN database. the CardScan database i am using to organized all my business cards while my MAC CONTACTS/ADDRESS BOOK i use primarily to make phone calls.
Window > "Previous Recipients" is ostensibly a list of anyone that i have REPLIED TO. however, this database resides solely upon the computer on which you have Mac Mail installed on (i.e. i have hundreds of these on my Mac Pro and for some odd reason i only have one on my MBP). BTW another interesting question is whether there is a set of these on my iPhone or if/where it draws this information from for autocomplete in MAIL on the IPHONE.
anyway, i have a script that will add all my PREVIOUS RECIPIENTS to my MAC ADDRESS BOOK/CONTACTS into a single folder so that i can get the data from the MAC PRO into AB/CONTACTS so that both the iPhone and my Mac Pro can use this information for autocompleting email. however, this seems like a very temporary stopgap measure.
is the correct way to manage this to go one by one through each Previous Recipient, Add the one's that i want to AB/Contacts through the add functionality - at which point i can /see/ that this contact has been added to AB? if so, is there a way to do this so that my hundreds of EMAIL ADDRESSES don't totally pollute my CONTACTS on my iphone where i make phone calls? i mean, i want this data accessible to MAIL AUTOCOMPLETE but i don't really want to have to wade through all of these to get to a phone number.
also, while the script that i have will send them all to a folder this does not mark them as added to AB and it is confusing to me as to how i manage this when NEW previous recipients are in the list.
and do you have a problem with a PREVIOUS RECIPIENT email address overwriting a contact with the same name that is a PHONE NUMBER in AB/Contacts?
TIA for any help or links to good urls on this etc.

Open System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects
Select: Play user interface sound effects
In Mail. From the Mail menu bar click Mail > Preferences then select the General tab.
Select: Play sounds for other mail actions
And make a sound selection from the New Messages Sound pop up menu.

Mail crashes and can't delete

Mail crashes after about 30 seconds and also before I can delete any items.

Same is happening with me. I cannot delete mail (without the mail app crashing and the deleted mails reappearing) and the app often crashes by itself when checking for mail.
Mail is coming is but I can't send mail before a crash and the mess is building up (without being able to delete) and pretty frustrating overall.
I tried both the reset and IMAP suggestions (although the offending mail account doesn't seem to be my MobileMe IMAP account). Both of the other accounts are POP and have always worked fine. They are my primary email accounts.
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Previous Recipients will not delete - have tried everything

I've removed from Previous Recipients list in the address line, in the drop down menu... I have removed the email addresses from the Address Book and still they keep coming back. On several occasions I'll delete it repeatedly from all areas and it keeps coming back as if I did nothing... It's like Groundhog Day....

Hi... As mentioned, I have tried everything - probably about 30 times... Have removed from Menu/Window/Previous Recipients, removed from Mail address, removed from contacts...

Mountain Lion Mail previous recipients question

I have searched to figure out how to do this and I'm sure the answer is somewhere but I can't find it. I have edited a group in my address book and am now trying to send Mail to the edited group but Mail keeps autofilling in the old group. Thankfully I discovered this by expanding the group in my email to make sure the list of recipients was correct. It wasn't. How do I get Mail to forget the recipients of the "old" group and use the newly edited group? Thought that groups might show up in the "previous recipients" list under window>previous recipients and then I could just remove the group and start over but the group name isn't in that list. Hope this makes sense!

Well, thanks so much for the response and your attempt to help! However, when I control click the group and send email that way, it STILL populates with the old group. Ugh! For example, John Doe is in the "old group" but I have edited him and lots of others out of the group and others into the group but he still shows up in the list of recipients and the new guys are missing.
I have worked around this issue by just renaming the group but I'd really like to name it the old name because that is the name that makes sense! I've worked around the problem for now but would still like to know the answer to this issue. The crazy thing is that this happened to me this summer and I fixed it somehow but can't remember how! I thought it was by removing the group from previous recipients list. Perhaps that was the solution but the problem happened before I moved to Mountain Lion when several things changed in Mail.
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I bought an used iPhone 4s, previous owner did not delete their icloud account. Everything is linked to their icloud, how do I delete it without their password?

I have my own icloud account, but I can't add it because I can't delete the previous owner's without their password. How do I get rid of it?!? They aren't responding to my message and obviously they probably don't want to give their icloud account password to some stranger. All their contacts and emails are hooked onto their icloud..

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IPhone Mail 'previous recipients'-can't delete

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