No way to get this fully off correct? You can only delete one by one from previous recipients list..?

It also picks up from Contacts, so deleting from Previous Recipients isn't a panacea.

Like Artie I know of no way to turn the Mail address autocomplete off completely or otherwise, nor am I sure you would really want to do that, but you can delete the entire previous recipients list with five keystrokes…

1. On the Mail menu bar click on Window
2. On the Window menu click on Previous Recipients
3. Click on any entry in the list
4. Press Command+A (⌘A) to select all previous recipients
5. At the bottom of the window click on the button labeled "Remove From List"

Job done 👍

Names in Contacts that have email addresses will still be autofilled when you start entering their name in the mail address bar. If you want to prevent those names being autofilled a workaround would be to copy their email address to the Notes area in Contacts then delete any entires in the email field. That you would have to do one at a time (unless you are good at writing Swift or Python programs) 🤔. NOTE: since email address in the Contacts list are often used to identify "good" email senders, moving the email address could easily result in important messages ending up in the spam folder, so you would want to be very selective in choosing or you can turn off all spam detection and live with the junk mail.

Of course the Previous recipients list will immediately begin to repopulate with each new email message you send, but there is always the five keystrokes. It might even be possible to create an Automation or AppleScript to erase the Previous Recipients List, but that is a LOT more work than five keystrokes. 😳

Thanks Joe, yeah, I know about previous recipients, Funny I often do shift delete which gets things out of browsers autifill. And confuse those two pestly autofills.

Thanks for note tip.

What happens every blue moon is I have a very personal / confidential email go out to a friend, lets say Joe, but then someone at a business, maybe some one I don't' like at all, but just emailed about something , comes on top of the list Joe A- and the revealing/ confidential email goes out to the stranger- JoeA instead of my real friend Joe.. He gets the email!

Happend several times..

OUCH! I worked the bulk of my professional life in environments where a miscue like that could easily have earned me a 25 year vacation, so I understand.

I may have a workaround that might reduce the risk. Assuming you address the emails by name and Mail fills in the full name and email address. Edit the entry for the person you do not like to add a stray character to his name. So Instead of JoeA it becomes ".JoeA". The dot or period is easily overlooked by the recipient and unlikely to be the first character in someone's name on your end. Hope that helps.

That is an old standby to force an item to the head of an alphabetical list. CAUTION: File or folder names beginning with "." makes them invisible on a Mac so tilde (~) or double square brackets ( [] ) are frequently used in that situation.

See my sig!

It's not facetious; it's reality!

Thanks JOe, artie, artie was right that even after deleting JOeA from previous recipients ; JoeA not first anymore but still on the list now the note trick could solve that...

But note trick and putting period first, in reality.. not sure.. because I'm not analyzing usually in my 600 contacts at any giving point who could get an email by accident, as occurs rarely ... its just evolved over time. Hence even though I actually love the auto feature, I did want to test trying the app without it for awhile.

Alas not possible, as Apple has become the pest you often cannot control.

There are, of course, alternative email clients in the app store and elsewhere, but all I have tried have autocomplete and some insist on sharing my mailing list on their platform whether I want to or not.

Thanks JOe, I remember you use one, but way to conversant with Mail, sycing 4 devices. However, I did download the Fastmail app and worked good: They "handle" the imap before it gets to Mail, and they have easy folder structure, whereas ios/ Mail, impossible to find things in folders.

Now rare I dig into those folders on iphone, but need to that app would save the day.

If you can explain — in detail — what you want in your mail folder structure and flow, I can walk you through creating that in Mail. it is not the most configurable in that regard, but not bad at all. With a few configuration tweaks, some rules to sort incoming mail and "smart" mailboxes there isn't much you cannot do relatively easily.

NOTE: I recently reverted back to Mail because of its compatibility with my database management system and new features in macOS 12 (Monterey).

Thanks Joe, yeah, Mail is best right? Only ios On desktop, all folders are easy access. On ios, one super long list of 100 folders subfolders, but the fAstmail app is ok workaround.

I can't say Mail is definitively the best, but it has advantages in its ability to link and synch with other applications. The problem on iOS is features like smart folders, that are very handy take advantage of tools like Spotlight in macOS but it is not supported in either iPadOS or iOS and the iPhone is further limited by the size of the display. I am not convinced that even a folding screen will be a satisfactory solution to that.