Forgive me, I don't know the terminology here...



When I am filling in an e-mail address, I can enter the first letter then a list of e-mail addressed shows up relative to that letter. I can "arrow" to various address then press DEL to remove them. However, next time I open Outlook, they are back. I deleted then named in contacts list.

What can I do to make these obsolete addresses go away?

You just thought me how to delete items from Outlook's memory of recently used e-mail addresses...
but strangely enough, for me they stay away after I "Del" them

I noticed some other strange this with this feature though: when I type H, one of the entries in the list doesn't even contain that letter...

weird stuff

So, exit Outlook, enter again and the deleted entries are still gone?

Also: Extra entries for your "H" may be the first letter in the e-mail address and not just a first letter in the name.

If deleting the Auto-Complete entries individually isn't working, then you'll probably need to clear the entire cache. I've seen this behavior in various versions of Outlook, and clearing the entire cache was the only thing that would fix it.

To clear the cache in Outlook 2010:

1. Open Files > Options.
2. Click on Mail.
3. Scroll down to the Send Messages section, and click the button labeled "Empty Auto-Complete List".
4. Click Yes on the confirmation.

You may also want to check and make sure that the old email address that's coming up isn't listed in any of your contact lists.

Hope this helps.

-SW

It looks like I am going to clear all e-mail auto-completes? Will this then allow me to delete individual auto-complete ont at a time in the future or will I have to delete them all the time when I want to remove a single one?

Is something going to be fixed with this mass delete?

Yes that process will clear all of the email auto-complete entries. Auto-complete should function normally (and you should be able to delete entries as normal) once this is done. I say "should", because there's really no guarantees, but it has worked for me in the past.

It's like I tell some of my clients: A lot of people tend to use the auto-complete cache as a de facto contact list, but it really wasn't made for that purpose. The cache does tend to get corrupt from time to time. This is particularly problematic in an Exchange environment, because when people move between OUs they can suddenly find themselves getting NDRs due to the auto-complete trying to resolve an address that doesn't exist anymore. Bottom line is: if an email address is important to you, make a real contact out of it.

Sorry for the slight deviation from topic, there.

-SW

But now, how does one repopulate the Auto-complete list?

Easy with one additional step before cleaning it out.

I created an e-mail message and went through all of the auto-complete entries. In the BCC line, I hit "A" and then selected all the contacts I wanted to keep from"A", then "B", "C" etc. I ended up with a BCC list of all the Auto-completes that I wanted to keep. I then cut and paste that list into the body and sent the message to myself.

I then used the button to delete them all.

When I opened the e-mail message that I received from myself and copied all the names back into the BCC.

They all underscored and were now entered into the newly cleaned out auto-complete list. I did not have to send the message.

Neat, huh?

(-: