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Tech Tip

Cleaning Out Addresses in Mail App

Q. When I write emails to colleagues and friends after typing the first several letters of the email address on my Mac using the Mail app, the program automatically fills in the balance of the address. I have 20 years of history of email, and often the address used is no longer the correct one. How do you get rid of old addresses?

A. When some of the email addresses in the Mail program’s memory become obsolete, you can prune the outdated entries or update them on the spot. In the Mail app, go to the Window menu and choose Previous Recipients. The Previous Recipients box opens with a list of addresses you have used for earlier messages.

To delete an old address, select it and click the Remove From List button in the bottom-left corner of the box. To select multiple names for removal at once, hold down the Mac’s Command key and click through the list.

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The Previous Recipients box in the Mac's Mail program gives you the chance to delete outdated contacts that keep popping up when the program tries to automatically complete an address.Credit...The New York Times

If you do not see the address you are looking for right away, enter it in the Search box in the upper-right corner of the Previous Recipients window. The entries in the window are grouped into columns showing the person’s name or email address or the last time you used the address; click the top of the appropriate column to sort the list on that criteria.

Names in the first column that have address-card icons next to them are stored in your Mac’s Contacts list. You can change the information by double-clicking the name to open the Contacts entry. Click the Edit button in the lower-right corner to update the address and other details in the Contacts app. You can add addresses in your Previous Recipients list to your Contacts app by selecting the entry and click the Add to Contacts button in the lower-right corner of the window.

Removing outdated addresses in other mail programs works in a similar fashion. Some programs, like Microsoft Outlook, let you delete entries directly from the open autocomplete list. In Gmail, you can tidy things up by deleting or editing your Google Contacts list.

Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to techtip@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 5 of the New York edition with the headline: How to Clean Out Old Addresses. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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