Apple Mail dredges up old email addresses

[DaveWT]

When I am creating a new email address, I start to type in the recipient's name in the "To" field and Apple populates it with what it finds, so I can conveniently (usually) just hit "return" and it will finish filling in the field. But I often forget to check what is has filled in, then.
Sometimes it will find an old email address no longer used and then the email bounces as undeliverable. I know it looks to see what is in my Contacts and I have even gone to the "Recent Recipients" window to delete the old address that was there.

But Apple Mail seems to also go searching for old emails I may have received from that person and saved away in some mailbox when the old email address was still in use.

So my question is: Is there some setting in Apple Mail in macOS that will prevent Mail from retrieving email addresses from old items of email saved in various mailboxes?

 

[chas_m]

Not really. You can archive those saved emails and save them to another drive that's not in use, or compress the archive file so Mail can't see it. Barring those ideas, when a person who's name you're typing has more than one email address associated (that's not in Previous Recipients or in Contacts -- make sure you don't have any duplicate contacts!), a drop-down list of possible addresses appears, so unless you want to do the work of archiving old emails your best bet is to just take a second and select the email address you actually want from the drop down list.

 

[DaveWT]

... your best bet is to just take a second and select the email address you actually want from the drop down list.

Ah such a simple concept, but I have proven that I am not to be trusted to do this reliably.

 

[TimRichards]

Ah such a simple concept, but I have proven that I am not to be trusted to do this reliably.

I too have sent a fair number of emails into oblivion having been busy and not stopped to check the send address. I wish there was a banish button for unwanted addresses.

 

[DaveWT]

OK, I am still at this. I tried a different approach. I went into Mail Preferences to set up a Rule. Basically if the To: field contains "old address" then redirect it to "new address". I thought this was so clever but it doesn't seem to work. Do Mail Rules only apply to incoming emails and not outgoing emails? My test still tried to send it out to "old address" and I got the dreaded "undeliverable" message for my efforts.

 

[DaveWT]

This gets stranger and stranger. In the following example the email addresses are made up.
My friend had an old email address jblow10@telus.net which is now dead.
His current email address is jblow10@outlook.com

So when I start to fill out the To: line by typing jblow it completes the address and sometimes offers me the incorrect jblow@telus.net which I fail to notice. This email address is NOT in my Contacts and is NOT in "Recent Recipients" so I have been assuming it is dredging it up out of old emails I have saved in mailboxes "On My Mac".

But I just realized my friend had an even older email address jblowhard@pacificcoast.net, also dead now, and I have emails from him at that time also saved in mailboxes "On My Mac". Yet that email address is NEVER offered when I compose and email and start to type jblow...

So my assumption it is finding the telus email address in old pieces of email must be wrong. Can anyone think where else it might be hiding?

 

[chas_m]

I don’t know this to be a fact, but I would guess that the mail program does a quick check to see if the email domain is still valid, so if the person had an email address from a provider who is no longer in business, that option wouldn’t be offered.

 

[DaveWT]

I don’t know this to be a fact, but I would guess that the mail program does a quick check to see if the email domain is still valid, so if the person had an email address from a provider who is no longer in business, that option wouldn’t be offered.

Well that could certainly explain why it didn't dredge up jblowhard@pacificcoast.net perhaps but it is still coming up with jblow10@telus.net from somewhere. (i.e. it is still finding some reason to associate jblow10 with telus when I have done my darndest to make it forget that history.)

 

[DaveWT]

And the search goes on...
If I go into my Contacts I only see the new email address for "jblow..."
But if I do a Spotlight search I see:

"Siri found in Apps
jblow...@telus.net" with an icon for Contacts

Then under "Contacts" in the Spotlight sidebar I see:

"jblow...@outlook.com
jblow...@telus.net
jblow...@telus.net" Each of these has icon for Contacts if selected

So I can't see how the last two lines are different from each other in the first place.
But also this implies that Contacts is retaining this old info. I wondered if Contacts had a "Previous Recipients" area like Mail does but I can find no trace of one. So I can not find this old email address anywhere in Contacts even though the Spotlight search seems to claim that info is there somewhere.

 

[DaveWT]

I started to wonder if Contacts had a "Recent Recipient" type area like Mail does where old email addresses are retained. I couldn't find anything like that but did stumble across "Look for Duplicates..." so I gave that a try with "jblow...@outlook.com" selected. It pronounced that it found duplicates with different information and duplicates with the same information and asked if I wanted to merge them. I thought that might produce one result with the old and the new email addresses listed, which I could later edit. But alas after letting it rip, I see no difference in the entry for "jblow...@outlook.com" in my Contacts but it no longer claims there are duplicates when I check again.

Spotlight seems to still find the old addresses in Contacts however. But composing a new email seems to mainly offer the new address at last, with only a hint of the old email address listed under "Siri found in Apps", so I may be less likely to choose that one. It doesn't appear I will really ever find where the old email addresses are hidden so this may be the best I can do.