Where is "Previous Recipients" located

Hi All,
I have a very sick Mail.app. It no longer has default black font for non junk mail. It no longer filters junk mail by the advanced rules (just plain ignores them,) And training mode caches nothing after some 200 have been marked as junk over the last month. The junk filter has been corrupted in some manor. It has actual been quirky since I went from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3 (by disk). So I intend on junking all of mail and reloading from my tiger disks using D.B. Cooper.app. But I want to save my "Previous Recipients" from the the "Windows" drop-down but I cannot find where "Previous recipients" is located. Can some one give me a Path?
Jim
thanks for all your help.
P.S. I too do not like the changes that have been made to this forum
G5D2/2.5Gs/410in+500out/23HD Mac OS X (10.4.4)

I too have been looking for this for a long time, but checked on Library, Application Support, even examined package contents of Mail and could not find it. It is dumb for Spotlight not to be able to help find a file that contains OUR non-application-code data. I read somewhere else that it is kept with ADDRESSBOOK (so copying AddressBook folder to somewhere else should copy that data also), which is strange to keep it there since it is MAIL data. Anyway, I looked but cannot find a file or resource with that. Still looking.
Imran

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Where does Mail keep its hidden cache of auto-complete email addresses. I am plagued with an incorrect email adress I can't get rid of. Have made sure it's deleted from Contacts and made sure it's deleted from "previous recipients" list in Mail - i

Where does Mail keep its hidden cache of auto-complete email addresses. I am plagued with an incorrect email address I can't get rid of. Have made sure it's deleted from Contacts and made sure it's deleted from "Previous Recipients" list in Mail. But it still keeps reappearing ... obviously a secret cache file hidden somewhere?

Autocomplete has nothing to do with this problem.
From the Mail menu bar, select
Window ▹ Connection Doctor
Look for a disused SMTP (outgoing mail) account in the window that opens. Double-click it. Another window will open, showing a list of all the outgoing mail accounts. The unwanted one will be selected. Click the minus-sign button to delete it, then click OK.
If there's more than one unwanted account, repeat.

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.

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.

Way to merge previous recipients lists?

Hi guys-
Did a search on this with no luck. I recently bought a new desktop and 'migration assisted' all my data over from my laptop, but several things did not transfer, including my previous recipient list for mail. After a search I figured out where this file is, so know how to move it, but would prefer to merge it so that I don't lose any of the new emails from the last few months (I've been too busy to tackle this for about four months).
Is there an easy way to do this? Can I simply TextEdit the files together? Suggestions would be awesome, thanks!
With gratitude,
Matthew

hi barney.
thank you. i have been trying to figure out how to manage this but also to /maintain/ it.
from what i am gathering (i also found this method for manually transferring the database) the way to do this is to:
1. /manually/ add all Previous Recipient emails to my Address Book into a /new/ " previous recipients category.
2. wipe out all previous recipients in both the macpro and the macbookpro databases.
3. periodically check Previous Recipients on both computers, manually add to AB and then wipe out.
AB syncing with iCloud will get them to my iPhone at that point and apparently Mail looks to AB /first/ to get an autocomplete anyway.
if anyone has additional info to add to this i would love to hear it...
- jon

Managing Previous Recipients (doesn't it over-write existing?)

i have also posted this in the Lion forum as i am stuck on lion on the mac pro even though i went ahead and upgraded to ML on the MBP before realizing this.
i had a couple of problems the last time i went into Mac Mail and tried to add my Previous Recipients to my Address Book/Contacts so that i can use this data to AUTOCOMPLETE emails on my MBP, Mac Pro and my iPhone. right now these databases reside solely on the computer that Mail is installed upon so ostensibly adding them manually to AB/Contacts allows you to sync for Autocomplete.
1. do you have problems with a Previous Recipeint named "John Smith" overwriting a Contact "John Smith" so that now in AB/Contacts you have just an email address instead of the phone number (which i need to make calls)?
2. is there a way to add these Previous Recipients so that they go into a /specific/ group? i have a ton of groups and currently with the switch to iCloud there is apparently no longer a way to SORT BY UNGROUPED which means i have a ton of contacts that only reside in ALL CONTACTS and this makes life very difficult for finding things.
3. do you basically maintain the link of these Previous Recipients by going into Previous Recipients on your various machines from time to time and checking to see what has been added to this list but has not been added to AB/Contacts? and then do you manually add these?
4. is there such a thing as Previous Recipients on my iPhone? i mean, if i reply to a VIP on my iPhone - would i think have to wait until i also replied to his/her email on one of my computers before i had a chance to see that this was a Previous Recipient that had to be added to my contact database?
TIA for any help or link to url's on this.
also a shout out to the mac developer crew. i would love to see a way to see globally how all my contacts are or are not sorted into GROUPS. at the very least it would be great to see the ones not in groups so i can make sure everything can be added to the group.
and finally, i am not a fan of the new UI for Contacts on the iPhone in iOS6. this checkmark business where i have to go through and uncheck All Contacts and then check the individual group(s) i want to see is a major pain from the previous implementation which i don't remember but which i never had a problem with. does anyone know how to manage 20+ groups without contantly clicking on and off things in this UI on the iPhone these days...?

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?

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.

Adding Previous Recipients overwrites existing Contacts in AB/Contacts

i had a couple of problems the last time i went into Mac Mail and tried to add my Previous Recipients to my Address Book/Contacts so that i can use this data to AUTOCOMPLETE emails on my MBP, Mac Pro and my iPhone. right now these databases reside solely on the computer that Mail is installed upon so ostensibly adding them manually to AB/Contacts allows you to sync for Autocomplete.
1. do you have problems with a Previous Recipeint named "John Smith" overwriting a Contact "John Smith" so that now in AB/Contacts you have just an email address instead of the phone number (which i need to make calls)?
2. is there a way to add these Previous Recipients so that they go into a /specific/ group? i have a ton of groups and currently with the switch to iCloud there is apparently no longer a way to SORT BY UNGROUPED which means i have a ton of contacts that only reside in ALL CONTACTS and this makes life very difficult for finding things.
3. do you basically maintain the link of these Previous Recipients by going into Previous Recipients on your various machines from time to time and checking to see what has been added to this list but has not been added to AB/Contacts? and then do you manually add these?
4. is there such a thing as Previous Recipients on my iPhone? i mean, if i reply to a VIP on my iPhone - would i think have to wait until i also replied to his/her email on one of my computers before i had a chance to see that this was a Previous Recipient that had to be added to my contact database?
TIA for any help or link to url's on this.
also a shout out to the mac developer crew. i would love to see a way to see globally how all my contacts are or are not sorted into GROUPS. at the very least it would be great to see the ones not in groups so i can make sure everything can be added to the group.
and finally, i am not a fan of the new UI for Contacts on the iPhone in iOS6. this checkmark business where i have to go through and uncheck All Contacts and then check the individual group(s) i want to see is a major pain from the previous implementation which i don't remember but which i never had a problem with. does anyone know how to manage 20+ groups without contantly clicking on and off things in this UI on the iPhone these days...?

ThanosD wrote:
I am not trying to do this via the address-book. I am in the Previous Recipients dialog of Mail.
that dialog has very limited functionality. as you've found out, if an email is already present in some AB contact it won't let you import it again from the previous Recipients list. and it won't put them in existing contacts. it will always make separate entries. the best you can do is select all (or some) items in previous recipients and click 'add to address book". it will add the addresses that are not already in the AB and ignore the others.
From there, I should be able to add an entry into the address-book using the "Add to Addressbook" button.
Sure, I could take every entry in Previous Recipients, and manually edit the address-book entries, but there are hundreds, and that would take me forever.

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

Deleting from previous recipients list

Autofill of addresses contains incorrect or not wanted addresses, most of these don't show in the previous recipients list and when I delete the incorrect ones, they come back and continue to fill in the address pane. The incorrect addresses have been corrected in Address book and I don't know where the others are or came from. How do I clean them all out?

Make sure there are no addresses in the Previous Recipients that you need, then quit Address Book and Mail and delete ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
AK

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.

Previous Recipients list is malfunctioning

Hi, I am running Mac OSX Lion and screwed up my mail/addressbook synch and cant figure out what to do. Honestly I am happy to export to any editable file (excel?) in lieu of using addressbook. Right now I just need to work with my mailing list data.
Here's what I did: I carefully edited my 'Previous Recipients' file. When finished I selected all, and pushed the "add to Addressbook" synch button. All looked fine in mail, but the edits were not reflected in the actual addressbook. SO I (stupidly) erased all contacts in my addressbook hoping to do a clean import of all of my updated files, but the synch will not work...Ive tried everything. The good news is that my edited data remains in my PR file but this data is not exportable so I cannot use it. Does anyone know where I can find the actual file?
Does anyone have any ideas??
Sheesh I am doing a major mailing this week and thought that this was the easy part ManyMany thanks!!!

No one is smart enough to help me out on this one? I am sure someone has seen this!

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'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

Previous Recipients and Contacts across devices?

i am having a devil of a time with my contacts.
i have about 10,000 contacts in my CardScan software which resides solely on my desktop machine.
i have personal and important numbers stored in Contacts synced via iCloud to my iPhone, laptop and desktop.
i have Previous Recipients (email addresses that i have responded to) synced manually once in a blue moon by adding this email address to my Contacts from each of my computers (laptop and desktop) and these apparently simply get dumped in Contacts and then i have to manually sort these in Contacts.
this means that;
1. my business contacts are not accessible on my laptop or iphone when i travel.
2. my previous recipients are not on all my devices unless i happen to have manually added them in the Previous Recipients window on /both/ my laptop and on my desktop (this info resides solely on the HD until added to Contacts)
3. email addresses are dumped willy-nilly into Contacts where i have to manually sort them.
anyone have any suggestions on what to research or how to get this more automated?
i am considering uploading all my CardScan contacts to GMail contacts but this is as far as i have gotten with all of this.
TIA for any advice or search terms etc.

In the peer to peer world, where Skype started, syncing things was difficult at best and impossible at worst. As we move to a server-based infrastructure, a much better multi-device experience will be possible.
You can read more about it here:
http://blogs.skype.com/2013/10/04/skype-architecture-update/
Follow us @SkypeSupport.
To get the most out of Skype I recommend Skype Premium.
Download Skype for Windows Phone from the Store.
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Where is "Previous Recipients" located

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