Mail's Previous Recipients Preferences

I just upgraded to Leopard and imported all my e-mails into mail. However, I'm missing the previous recipients list, and many of the rules are based on it. I have a backup of my previous system and would like to know where I could find the file to copy it over. Alternatively, is there a way to add previous recipients manually in bulk? Thanks.

I don,t have the answer but I have also a problem with mail preferences since I upgraded to Leopard . When I click on mailpreferences nothing happens. So where are the preferences or how do I get them back.
Tilly

Similar Messages

Mail - importing 'previous recipients' information following OS upgrade

Hi,
I've encountered a problem following my recent upgrade to Mountain Lion.
I previously ran Snow Leopard and over time my Mail app had built up a long list of everyone that I'd ever sent an e-mail to through its Previous Recipients function. I didn't get on board with adding these contacts to my Address Book early enough so by the time I realised that would be a good idea I felt there were far too many for the job to be worthwhile. It wouldn't have been a straightforward 'add all' job since some of the contact info was no doubt incomplete or undesireable.
Now that I don't have Mail auto-filling the recipient field I've realised I don't actually know any of my regular contact's e-mail addresses. This is a problem...
I'm wondering if in Snow Leopard, Mail's previous recipients were stored in a file somewhere and if it would be possible to simply copy that file to the appropriate directory in Mountain Lion to solve my problem. I understand that the list will have some contacts that I'm not interested in but between that and having none at all there isn't really a choice.
So, to summarise:
Recent upgrader from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion (Macbook being my only piece of Apple gear, also yet to adopt iCloud)
Mail user, reliant on 'previous recipients' auto-fill feature in 'send to' field (no contacts have been added to address book)
Seeking to copy previous recipients file from Snow Leopard back-up to appropriate Mountain Lion directory
Is this possible? Here's hoping someone can help.
Cheers
Edit: I should probably mention that this was a clean install of Mountain Lion rather than an upgrade.

Hi,
I've encountered a problem following my recent upgrade to Mountain Lion.
I previously ran Snow Leopard and over time my Mail app had built up a long list of everyone that I'd ever sent an e-mail to through its Previous Recipients function. I didn't get on board with adding these contacts to my Address Book early enough so by the time I realised that would be a good idea I felt there were far too many for the job to be worthwhile. It wouldn't have been a straightforward 'add all' job since some of the contact info was no doubt incomplete or undesireable.
Now that I don't have Mail auto-filling the recipient field I've realised I don't actually know any of my regular contact's e-mail addresses. This is a problem...
I'm wondering if in Snow Leopard, Mail's previous recipients were stored in a file somewhere and if it would be possible to simply copy that file to the appropriate directory in Mountain Lion to solve my problem. I understand that the list will have some contacts that I'm not interested in but between that and having none at all there isn't really a choice.
So, to summarise:
Recent upgrader from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion (Macbook being my only piece of Apple gear, also yet to adopt iCloud)
Mail user, reliant on 'previous recipients' auto-fill feature in 'send to' field (no contacts have been added to address book)
Seeking to copy previous recipients file from Snow Leopard back-up to appropriate Mountain Lion directory
Is this possible? Here's hoping someone can help.
Cheers
Edit: I should probably mention that this was a clean install of Mountain Lion rather than an upgrade.

How do I remove a distribution list from Mac Mail's Previous Recipients list? 10.9.2

I have a few pesky distribution lists that live on as ghosts. Distribution lists do not show up in Mail's Previous Recipients list. Any help as to how to remove them?
The distribution lists I want to get rid of are not in my Contacs.
Thank you,
Rand

Dear Allan, Very interesting solutions to a stuck disk. I'm going to keep it for future.
I finally did get my disk out - because I started up using my Mtn.Lion BU (it's a Firewire) which I connected to my old MM late 2009. There she was & I ejected it.
And I did finally get my MM 2009 working again with Snow Leopard - with the great help from ds store.
So now I have my Appleworks back too. YAH!

Mail's Previous Recipients - Tried the obvious

So my boss was having old email addresses pop up in the autocomplete for Mail. I deleted them out of the Previous Recipients list, still happening. So I deleted the MailRecents-v4.abcdmr file, and that solved the old email address problem, but now Mail is not saving ANY recently used email addresses. And there are a couple really weird ones (but that may be an exchange global address list issue).
I've tried trashing the preferences for Mail. That didn't work (and it hosed his sidebar, so I put them back)
Any suggestions would be a huge help.
Thanks

The problem now is that there's no address autofill, correct? In Mail > Preferences > Composing, is "Automatically complete addresses" checked?

Any way to mail all "Previous Recipients"?

I'm using Tiger. Is there a way to select everyone in my "Previous Recipients" list in Mail and send them an email? I know how to do this from the Address Panel window, but there are many people I email that I don't want to bother adding to my Address Book.

There is no built in way to select all in the mail app to delete all emails at once. However, Destef_12, found a way to do it and it is explained in this discussion.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/22106590#22106590

Adding Mail's 'previous recipients' email addresses to Address Book

I dumped all of the 'previous recipients' email addresses to Address Book today, but when I looked in Address Book they were all poorly organized, and there were many I did not want in there, so in order to save time (I thought) I deleted them, with the intent to go back to Mail and only add the ones I wanted, and in small batches so I could organize them better when I went back to Address Book. However, when I went back to the Mail application to re-add only the ones I wanted, I saw that the 'Add to Address Book' button is whited out. It appears that since I already added them to the Address Book, even though I subsequently delted them, Mail still thinks that they have entries in the Address Book. There appears to be no way to re-set them. I have looked all over through all of the help information for both Address Book and Mail and have found no way to overcome this problem. Any insights would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Brendan

Try Mail Scripts. I think the Add Addresses script will do what you want.

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.

Never mind. All is well. I tested it myself by removing a name and email address, one I knew by memory, from the list with one of the cards to the left side and discovered this did not remove it from my Address Book.

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.

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?

Import addresses into previous recipients but not into address book

I would like to import a list of email addresses into the previous recipients list. I know how to import them into my address book but I don't want them all in my address book. I just need them to be available to auto complete when I start typing them. Is there a way to do that?

Mail's previous recipients list is not a user modifiable database other than to remove entries in the database.

Deleted Address Book contents accidently. Now 'Previous Recipients' grayed

Hello all,
I accidentally deleted all of the contents of the Address Book with a misplaced Select All/Delete. It still works fine. It's just empty.
Now, from the Mail/Window/'Previous Recipients' window, each of the emails shows the little address book card on the far left side of the window (it think each email is in the address book). Thus, each email, when selected, grays out the 'Add to Address Book' button.
However, each brand new email that I send shows up in the 'Previous Recipients' list without the little card to the left of the name and it's 'Add to Address Book' button works fine.
How do I reset the entire list of the 'Previous Recipients' back to as if they were brand new so I can add them to the Address Book again.
Thanks
Message was edited by: steve061768
Message was edited by: steve061768

Hi Steve, and a warm welcome to the forums!
If I understand correctly...
In Mail>Window>Address Panel, Sect All, right click>Exort vCads, then in Address Book>File>Imort>vCards, select that file you just exported.

Previous recipients list includes spam addresses

When exploring Mail's Previous Recipients List, I notice a large number of addresses that are junk or spam mail. Some show a Last Used date that is quite recent.
I had thought that addresses are added to the PR List only when they are used as an addressee on sent email. I don't see anything in my Sent mailbox that would indicate that I (even inadvertently) sent mail to these Spam addresses.
Does the presence of the spam addresses indicate a problem? If working as designed, what is the purpose of keeping the spam address in the PR list?

I too have experienced a recent spam deluge and today I looked in my previous recipients window and found a bunch of spam addresses. I deleted them and let's hope that helps. I did find an older discussion on this forum where someone said that if you mark an item in your junk folder as "not junk" it gets added to your previous recipients folder. I have been trying diligently to mark all of my spam as spam (clicking the thumbs down button in the toolbar), so maybe I have accidentally approved some of it in that process. Will stop doing that. But I was doing that in response to the spam deluge, so I don't think that's what started it. Might be making it worse. Will start checking my previous recipients window and make sure to delete any spam in there.

Mail: 'Prev. Recipients' & Address Book discrepancies

I see this may be a perennial topic, but at least one recent thread didn't answer my problem. Despite updating in AddressBook a group I regularly send to (one card w/ ~12 addresses, not a Group) AND deleting from Mail's Previous Recipients that card's name, It still inserts into the 'To:' field my old unrevised list.

Thanks,
Problem solved,
Have a great day
regards,
Jayto

Junk mail filter in yosemite doesn't work. i can't find the 'mark as junk' selection or 'remove from previous recipients' which would help to filter out spam.

junk mail filter in yosemite doesn't work. from the flags, i can't find the 'mark as junk' selection. Formerly clicking on the email address in question would allow one to 'remove from previous recipients' which would help to filter out spam. I've adjusted all the settings under mail preferences, but that is not helping.

Hello Diane162,
Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!
I understand that you would like to be able to filter some of the junk mail that you are receiving in Mail. The attached article has a lot of great information on junk mail filtering, including how to mark as junk and adjust the junk filter.
Mail (Yosemite): Reduce junk mail in your inbox
Cheers,
Joe

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.

Mail's Previous Recipients Preferences

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for