It’s a quiet time with not much to blog. So I entertained myself by spring cleaning my Previous Recipients list.

Apple’s tech note on how to keep your Previous Recipients list up-to-date is one of my Top Five Apple Tech Notes for Mail Users.

You can find the list by selecting “Previous Recipients” from Mail’s Window menu.

It’s a good idea to go through the list from time to time because:

1. It stores incorrectly typed addresses and keeps suggesting them via Mail.app‘s auto-complete feature. That can be a pain.
2. It stores every address for every email you have ever sent, even addresses that people haven’t used for years. Do yourself a favour: Clean out the old ones.
3. Apple Mail‘s Junk Filter will not mark an email as junk if it comes from an address in your Previous Recipients list. Along with the Address Book, it functions as a de facto “white list“. Keeping it up to date helps Mail to find junk better
4. It’s quite fun to go through the list and wonder who all these people are that you have emailed at least once. It’s certainly more fun than spring-cleaning the house.

Similar Posts:

• Cleaning up Mail’s Previous Recipients List
• Five useful tech notes for Apple Mail users
• A Mail.app rule fix for image spam
• Mail.app and Address Book being stupid
• 30 disposable email address providers

Tags: Address Book, Apple Mail, junk filter, mail.app, Previous Recipients, tech note, white list

This entry was posted on Saturday, 22nd October, 2005 at 11:06 am and is filed under Address Book, Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.