One thing I find really irritating about Gmail is that once you have used an email address (as recipient for your message), this address is stored forever, in some place where you cannot access it. I.e., it does not show up in your contacs. But whenever I start typing an email address as recipient, this list with addresses I once used keeps being showed. I want rid of these old addresses! Do you know how to do that?
It’s not easy, but you can delete addresses from your Google Gmail auto-complete list. To do this, click on the Contacts link on the left side once you’re logged in to your Gmail account.
Then click All Contacts:
If you’re like me, you’ll find that Gmail has grabbed tons of email addresses and dropped them into the contact list. Definitely a drag.
If you want to just delete one or two, use the search feature to find them, check the adjacent box, and delete them. Tedious, but effective.
If you want to delete a class of addresses, like everyone who uses Hotmail, search for “hotmail.com”, then once you have your set of matches, scroll down to the bottom and notice that there are two shortcuts:
Click on All then if there are a few you want to retain, uncheck those before you click on the “Delete” button.
Finally, if you’ve had it and want to delete everyone in the contacts list, simply scroll to the bottom of the “All Contacts” list, click “All” and select “Delete”.
Unfortunately there’s no smart filtering system for managing this, no “select all addresses to which that I have never sent a message”, though that’d be darn cool. Or just ignore it all, which is what I do.
Hope that helps you out!
This was very helpful! I’ve been sending emails to someone’s personal email instead of their work address by accident, and I was able to delete their work email completely, so it is not populating. Gmail automatically kicked me and and logged me back in, so it worked fine.
The only thing I saw different, was I went to “Other Contacts” not “All” contacts.
Thanks for the help!
Dave…the Man! If some of the previous posters would SLOW down and read your solution closely, they would have seen your ‘All Contacts’ direction, etc. and saved themselves some confusion.
Unfortunately, now I can no longer blame my wife’s rogue MS Outlook .NK2 file for my mis-sent emails.
You should roll this thread up and take a collective pat on the back.
The key for me to making this work was, as suggested by Rajasekaran P was to LOG OUT of Gmail and then LOG BACK IN after cleaning up your contacts.
Thanks a lot man…this was really helpful.
how to delete email addresses saved in gmail login page ?
i use my friend’s computer and i open my gmail account there, after i signed out properly, but when i type a letter in username field my email address appear there, how i can delete it.
i tried already to clear all history, cache, autofill, formdata etc but useless :(, anybody can give me the solution please. I’m using Google Chrome.
I’ll be very thankful to you.
I have the same problem as the first question BUT i am not computer literate
Can somebody please explain to me VERY simply how to do it
I have all these all addresses which are still there even though not in my address book
Help
The first one to answer this CORRECTLY was Simon on Sept. 02 2010. Though you don’t want to delete “everything in there” just obviously check the unwanted e-mail addresses and delete those. Thanks! OMG…this has been bothering me for years! Finally….fixed. Works instantly – no need to log out and back in, etc. Here’s a copy of his earlier solution:
Go to contacts in Gmail, you’ll see “other contacts”. delete everything in there. That did the trcik for me.
Posted by: Simon at September 2, 2010 7:35 AM
This problem was driving me crazy. An incorrect email address kept popping up in autocomplete and it was not in my contacts.
I went to the People app on my Droid 4. Then I selected “Favorites” on the top. I found the offending contact on the list and selected. Sure enough, it was just the name but not his full contact record – just the offending email. So I deleted this record and the problem was solved.
Rajasekaran, you were dead on. And I HAD to go through dashboard to officially delete these contacts.
Thanks1
Going to “other contacts” in gmail and deleting the ones I selected worked perfect. I had considered closing the account, just to get rid of the auto complete.
Thanks!!!
I use Gmail on an Android device. Deleting the extraneous contact on the desktop version did not solve the problem on the smartphone. Neither did deleting all e-mails from the phone that reference the address. What I had to do was to open the “Contacts” app on the phone, go to “Favorites”, long-press on the offending contact, and delete it from there. Hope that helps those with the same problem.
go to picture of sprocket , right hand corner , select general tab , then check out what i have pasted:
Create contacts for auto-complete:
When I send a message to a new person, add them to Other Contacts so that I can auto-complete to them next time
I’ll add contacts myself
Select > i’ll add contacts myself
this will end the auto complete
All of the above sounds like good advice except for us people who are using an iPad for Gmail and when you open Gmail on a iPad there is NO contacts listing so there is no way of getting to that ? What I ended up having to do was go on to my home desktop computer and arrange/delete contacts via. My Gmail Account in there before they would be updated and available in my iPad !
I hope this helps anyone else out there with this problem using Gmail within an iPad !
Does anybody know how to do this for a Domain? We use google apps for education. I had already figured out how to nuke them out of *my* address book, but I can’t seem to figure out how to do it for everybody. What happens, is I get ride of it out of my address book, but somebody else in my domain still has it, so it continues to propagate. I do have admin privs.
yarngrrl THANKS for the tip about logging out – wish that was included in the orig post! worked perfectly. thanks dave and yarngrrl!
I am sorry.. i missed out the important words .. “recipient of our message”.. pls ignore my comment… 🙂
Hi,
I kept my mouse pointer on each of the addresses coming in the drop down and clicked on ‘Del’ button.
And it got disappeared from the list and never came back.
I also did delete temporary files and cookies and history.
Not sure if al these are connected.
But simply deleting by keeping mouse pointer works I guess… just try…
Chris and Kurtis’s posts seem to cover the current version of gmail. I did however have to log out and then log back in to gmail before the deleted contact did not appear in the auto complete list. Thanks for the help!
I simply clicked ‘contacts’, then ‘other contacts’. Checked the ones to delete and then ‘delete contacts’
Piece of cake! Cheers
Here is another way that is successful without the need to log out in this current version of gmail. To remove an address from the auto-complete list, follow these steps: … Click on Contacts again on the left of the side bar. … Then click on the Other Contacts this will list all contacts. … Check the box you want removed from the list. … Click on the More Actions tab and from that drop down click on Delete Contact. … That email is removed and will no longer auto-complete when you compose a new email.
Thanks a lot, very helpful.
Rajasekaran P’s advice from Dec 2 worked perfectly for me. However, to reach the page where you delete the contacts, I only needed to click “Contacts”. That may be because my GMail is a corporate account. Thank you all for the advice, such a great tip. Wish there were a more intuitive way for folks to do this.
Following worked me perfectly. Hope this helps others too. Once done needs logout and the login and check.
Goto -> Settings -> Accounts and Import – > Google Account Settings (Under Change account settings) -> View data stored with this account (Under dashboard) -> Manage Contacts (Under Contacts).
Now select the unwanted contacts which appears in the autocomplete and click “Delete Contact”.
Now logoff and then login and see.
Great to see that it is cleaned up.
Thank you! It worked perfectly and my contacts are now decluttered!
You have to delete them from your contacts – then log out of gmail. Once you log back in, they’re gone!
Go to contacts in Gmail, you’ll see “other contacts”. delete everything in there. That did the trcik for me.
Make sure once you go into Gmail ‘contacts’, choose ‘all contacts’ – the old address was in the list, but it wasn’t apparent
Exactly what I was looking for. Easy enough once you know how. Thank you very much.
i want to remove gmail permenently
Thank you so much for this thread. Deleting the erroneous contact AND clearing my IE form data worked. THANK YOU AGAIN!
I have the solution for all of you who still have the autocomplete problem when you delete the contacts. I’m assuming that you imported contacts from another email address. You have to stop importing messages and eliminate all ties with the previous email. It worked for me. Go to settings>import-accounts and delete the account that had the addresses you no longer want to see. hope this helps, it saved me.
Thanks! Your answer was very helpful and concise! Gmail’s auto-complete was driving me nuts!
Deleting from All Contacts worked for me too, using Gmail on Firefox.
Can’t tell you how many times I have or almost have sent a message to an e-mail address that I accidentally mistyped once 2 years ago. Thank you, thank you!
Hi!
I can confirm it worked for me. I had two similar email address poping up in the autocomplete and now only one shows up after deleting it from the contacts list.
For who it didn’t work: Maybe you have autocomplete in the browser or you did not delete it from the contacts. That was all that I did. I’m on IE 7.0 and ajax Gmail.
I have to agree with DaveL:
If you delete someone from your contacts, they still show up in the auto-complete feature… Any suggestions?
>DaveL: he didn’t miss the point. he’s understood and supplied a correct solu.
Be sure you click “all contacts” when you’re looking at your contacts. That should show every email address that could populate the autocomplete.
Try the Tools->Options->privacy tab in the browser and clear the settings
Hi, me too … I want to remove this one address from the auto complete feature.
Deleting from the address book does not fix the issue.
Someone help plz
also, i would like to keep the contact but I don’t want it showing in my auto complete
@DaveL: Exactly so. Did you resolve this? Its maddening, and I’m looking for a fix too.
You missed the fellows point. Deleting contacts is not difficult. It’s the auto-complete feature he is talking about. I am searching for a fix to this annoying problem myself. If you delete someone form your contacts. They can and do still show up in the auto-complete feature as you type an email address into the the To; field.