How To Remove a Bad Email Address

Most of us probably have links to stale email accounts and spoofed messages in our inboxes, and most likely, we click the first address that autofills — even if it’s an out-of-date account.

In Apple Mail, there is a wonderful window — Previous Recipients — that lists all saved addresses cached in your mail (in both your Inbox and Sent mail). Click on the Window menu when Mail is active and select “Previous Recipients.” You can sort the addresses then by name, address, last time used and whether or not the address is in your Address Book application. Highlight the addresses you want to remove, and click “Remove From List” to purge them from Mail’s cache.

What about Entourage and Outlook? It requires a little more effort to purge the cache in those applications. The routine I have found that works best is as follows: Start by creating a new message. Then, in the address bar of the new message, type in the email address and let it autofill the incorrect information. When the address fully appears in the To: window, control-click on it and select “Add to Contacts.” Your next window may reflect that you have an entry for that person already, so you’ll need to decide if you wish to add this address to the existing contact or make a new entry. Select “Make a new entry.”

Now that you have segregated the old address to its own discreet contact in the Address Book, navigate to Address Book, select the ‘bad’ address and delete it. This will purge the cache from your mail client.