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.
Ideally the preference would have three options: "don't do anything", "ask if nonconforming emails should be removed" and "automatically remove nonconforming emails when I change an email address in Contacts"

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.

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Something Mail.app ought to have and doesn't

i'd like to tell apple about this, but they don't have mail listed as an app to give feedback for. if anyone knows of an email address or url please feel free to point me in that direction. until then...
one of the things that's always frustrated me is that mail cannot choose a send mail server based on your network location. i use 4 different mail servers (two at school, one at my apt, and one back at home) regularly and the "send mail from last selected mailbox" doesn't get the job done.
for example, what if i'm at school and need to answer an email i got at one of my non-school addresses? mail.app tries to send the message using a send mail server it can't connect to, then i get the error message and can tell it which server to use.
i understand that you can also choose which account to send the mail from when composing the message. but what if i want the message to be from one of my other accounts? maybe i'd like to keep my school email address under wraps, or maybe i'm at home and would like to respond to a professor or someone with my school account.
mail should be able to figure out which send mail server to use based on your ip address and network location. it can be an option, or it can be automatic, but it should at least be. waiting for it to give me an error is just lame.
what do you guys think?
-mike
1.5 GHz Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Welcome to the Discussions.
This suggestion has been made before, and has merit. Add your weight to the idea, by sending feedback at:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
Ernie

How do I get to the screen in Mail that allows you to delete multiple "Previous Recipients" from the list? I have seen it but cannot find it again. Help.

How do I get to the screen in Mail that allows you to delete multiple "Previous Recipients" from the list? I have seen this screen but cannot find it again. It shows all of the "Previous Recipients" in a long list. You can edit the list by selecting multiple names or all names with the command key and delete. Help.

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

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.

I have updated my iOS and now my hotmail will not verify my password through apple mail app. I have reset password - tried new password and old password and it still gives me password incorrect. Hotmail works fine on Mac. Has anyone had this difficulty

I have updated my iOS and now my hotmail will not verify my password through apple mail app. I have reset password - tried new password and old password and it still gives me password incorrect. Hotmail works fine on Mac. Has anyone had this difficulty and been able to resolve it?

Did you try deleting the mail account, then adding it back? I've read a lot of times that is what needs to happen in order for it to work properly.

After upgrading to mountain lion, i find that my mail app does not have a "VIP" Tab. Was wondering if anyone else has this issue and what it is about?

after upgrading to mountain lion, i find that my mail app does not have a "VIP" Tab. Was wondering if anyone else has this issue and what it is about?

First, select sender(s) as VIPs. Then the VIP category will appear.
To select a sender as a VIP, open an email from that sender, then hover over their name and a star icon will appear to the left. Click the star, and that sender will be set as a VIP (and the category will appear in the pane on the left).

I can no longer receive mail using the mail app? I have to go online instead - why?

Hej some one,
I can no longer receive mail using the mail app? I have to go online instead - why & what can I do?

Check your smtp preferences in mail.app.
See if mail.app's Connection Doctor has any useful info. Does it's status indicate all is ok? When you use it's Show Detail are there any (useful) error messages?

After mail was moved to iCloud on jan 1, my mail app emails received have 23 lines of "routing info" between the address and the message. How can I get rid of this info?

After my mail was moved to iCloud, my mail app emails received have 23 lines of "routing data between the address and the message how can Imget rid of this "data"?

Found the answer a Mail>preferances>Viewing>Show header detail. Changed it to Default.

What mail app. should I have with OSX 10.6.8

What mail app. should I have with OSX 10.6.8

Incidentally, the mail version is tied to the OS you are using (10.6.8) in your case. You can always check by running software update.

BCC will not show recipients in Mail app - for IMAP client user

Our office iMac was just upgraded to Mavericks. The Apple mail app (which we use via IMAP to receive our gmail) will not show BCC recipients on sent mail. Not sure what other info you might need.
Yes it did work prior to Mavericks upgrade --lots of other quirks that are just user preference issues but this is by far a concern because we need to keep track of school sent emails. So far the only solution has been to use the gmail client via web interface -- hoping there is a different solution!
Thanks for any help
Joanne Bartolotti
ST Robert School
San Bruno

John -- Thank you for your reply.
When we send the email we (our user end) can see the recipients in the BCC field (good)
When the email is delivered they (the recipient) cannot see all the other emails (good)
"Susie" (who was on our original BCC list as a recipient) calls and says I did not get the email - We go to our sent folder and click on the sent email to verify the email address we used but (and here's the issue) it says "No recipients"
Prior to installing OSX Mavericks -- it listed ALL the recipients in our sent folder copy of the email (this was very helpful to us)
To date the ONLY solution has been to use the web version of gmail -- My question is (and please know I have done a number of checks on this process) Why did it work BEFORE upgrading to Mavericks and why does it not work NOW? Our school secretary is convinced it is "my fault" for upgrading the system -- I am convinced there is a user error since she NEVER lists anyone in the TO field
She will NOT use the web interface because it takes "too much time" -- for this my response is -- then fix it yourself! (Sorry 10 days left of school -- tech coordinator frustration creeping in -- tired of id10t erros -- should have waited to upgrade until no one was around and NOT tell them!)
Joanne

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.

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!

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 in Mail.app ought to have automatic management option

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