Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Lost Previous Recipients

I upgraded to High Sierra over the weekend and just noticed that I lost all of the Previous Recipients in the Mail app.

Anyone else notice this? Wondering if the file was moved somewhere else maybe?

Thanks.

I upgraded to High Sierra but did not have your experience with Previous Recipients.

Just upgraded another system to High Sierra and all Previous Recipients are gone. Very Weird.

I didn't experience that problem either

mail is one of the apps that's well-known to do a repair/rebuild of its data structures following an upgrade. (similar to iPhoto, iTunes, etc)

Personally, I would (and have) done a MAIL "rebuild" to restore my messages. However, if you have a large collection of saved messages, this could take a couple of hours. You can, in the meantime, still work on the computer while the rebuild runs its course.

In MENU BAR : Mail / Mailbox / Rebuild

Are you saying that rebuilding mail may get my 'previous recipients' back?

Just out of curiosity, because I edit my Previous Recipients list periodically, did you have a lot of important items on your list that aren't still in Contacts and make recovering the list critical?

I would not go so far as to say critical but it would certainly be very very helpful.

absolutely not. time machine might though. here's a post telling you what files to restore. make sure mail is not running when you do that.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7838502

it MAY be necessary to reboot, (NOT launch any apps) and do the restore, I don't know what other system processes may have that data cached.

It's interesting to see that the PRL is managed by AddressBook, not Mail (~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr)

Also check for the MOST RECENTLY CHANGED file group there in your time machine backup. Mine are in the set
AddressBook-v22.*
(restore the set)

I do not use time machine. The data is lost so time to move on.

I'd suggest you start. It's cheap, very unobtrusive, reliable, and handy to have. I've needed it in various locations a total of around ten times.

Just to add to V1's recommendation. I do a lot of experimentation and as a result, I often get myself into trouble and have to recover from some level of disaster. Time Machine lets me recover/restore/rebuild anything from individual files to the entire system at points in time from an hour previous to weeks even months prior. It requires no maintenance on my part and is virtually unnoticeable in operation.