How to clean up old Apple Mail recipients in macOS Monterey - AppleInsider

AppleInsider is supported by its audience and is eligible to earn an Amazon Associate and Affiliate Partner commission on qualifying purchases. These affiliate associations have no control over our editorial content.

Purging Apple Mail's previous recipient list helps Apple Mail workflows run more efficiently and smoothly, reducing the chances of accidental email errors. Here's how to do it

Apple users typically use Apple's Mail program to receive, write, and reply to email. Any email program can become cumbersome and difficult to manage, especially as email volume and recipients increase over the years.

Apple Mail tries to simplify mail management in a number of ways. The new version that will appear with the next generation of Apple's various operating systems will include important additions to Mail that will make it even better.

One way Apple Mail helps you manage your email is by remembering everyone you've emailed. This list can get very long and out of control, but it can be managed.

When Apple Mail is open, there are "standard" menu options at the top of Mail's main window: Mail, File, View, Mailbox, Message, Format, Window, and Help. The menu you want to click on is Window .

Once clicked, a drop-down list of 16 options will appear. Option number 12 from above: "Previous Recipients" is our focus.

You manage this list in the window with the list of previous recipients. The list consists of four columns: contact list icon, name, email and last used.

You can sort this list by these columns. The first type in the left column should show all addresses in your contact list. These contacts have a person icon on the far left of the list.

You can delete e-mails that show that they are already in your contact list. These addresses will not be removed from your contacts.

Then you have to go through the list and add the addresses you want to keep by clicking the Add to Contacts button at the bottom right.

The next look at the previous recipients list should be sorted by last used. If you haven't received or sent email to anyone on this list for a while, you can safely remove their information from this list.

If you use macOS and iOS with iCloud, changes you make on your Mac are synced to your iOS devices. You can manage past recipients on an iOS device, but it's not that easy and will be covered in future articles.

Try Adblock (Why?)