Email Addresses retained

[RonH]

Outlook.com
When Search is used a list of past contacted email addresses is displayed of those that are not in your Contacts.
How can these be deleted since most are not needed.
Help was ... of no help

[stuck]

Does this help:
    Click the gear icon at the top right of the Outlook.com window and then click More mail settings
    In the Customizing Outlook section, click Advanced privacy settings
    Make sure that Only suggest people in my contact list is selected
    Click Save

I distilled the above from here:
https://askleo.com/how-do-i-use-and-cle ... ggestions/
which was the first hit about outlook.com (as opposed to Outlook) on a Google search using the keywords 'outlook.com clear autocomplete'.

Ken

[HansV]

Hi Ken,

That article is from 2013. I cannot find that option in the current version of Outlook.com...

[RonH]

Thanks Ken but it seems that this possible method of removing email 'contacts' has been changed and despite searching all Settings I am still
Looking further into the article you found, one can read:

One of the risks of writing about Outlook.com or Hotmail… or let’s face it, anything on the internet … is that things change. Nowhere is that more common than with online email offerings. So if you don’t see exactly what I’ve described here, start exploring. Rarely are features like this actually removed. The concepts that I’ve outlined should still apply. You may just need to hunt around a little for the links and interfaces to control them.

I think that 'things have changed ... for the worse ... at least on the outlook.com web version I use on my Windows 10. Also I can not find any setting on my Android outlook.com app.

Oops ... Hans beat me to it

[RonH]

This is a sort of work around ...
https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... b037bce23e" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But it does seem that Microsoft will always retain (somewhere) all contacts ... for what reason one may ask.

[HansV]

That article is for the desktop version of Outlook, not for Outlook.com...

[RonH]

That article is for the desktop version of Outlook, not for Outlook.com...

... but the bit I like (and didn't realise) is that you can remove so called recent contacts in the Search of an email by hovering over it and clicking the x to remove. Thus the useful auto complete is still useful.

[HansV]

OK, glad that works for you!

[stuck]

...it seems that this possible method of removing email 'contacts' has been changed...

...I cannot find that option in the current version of Outlook.com...

Don't you just love it when something useful gets fangled, As in, "Wow, look at this new fangled feature."

Ken

[RonH]

Gentlemen ... my ageing grey matter has just notched up more miles. Time for a late afternoon nap
Thank you both for taking time out ... must be also lousy weather in your territories

[HansV]

Yes, lots and lots of rain today...

[HansV]

Don't you just love it when something useful gets fangled, As in, "Wow, look at this new fangled feature."

That's how it goes - old stuff gets fashioned, and new features get fangled...

[stuck]

It started off wet here today but now, as the sun sinks towards the horizon, the clouds are breaking up. About an hour ago we even saw patches of blue sky

Ken

[JoeP]

What you are seeing used to be called the "nickname" list in the Outlook desktop app. Now, it is suggested recipients. I believe those are retained because Microsoft has determined that users often do not create contacts for email addresses that they've used and often want to re-use the email addresses. This is just a quick way to retain those addresses and make them easily available. Unfortunately, there is no easy way in the web app to turn this off or clear the list. You have to use the workaround.

[HansV]

I can remove addresses from the AutoComplete list in the To box of a new message, but the removed names still come up when I click in the Search box...

[JoeP]

Do the email addresses exist in any email still in the account?

[HansV]

Nope! They were all addresses from people who sent me a message years ago; all those messages have long been deleted, and I didn't add the senders to my contacts.

[JoeP]

Seems like a search index needs to be rebuilt. I have no idea how to get that done for outlook.com but I wonder if deleting the search history in the outlook.com settings would have any effect.

[HansV]

I tried that too. It makes no difference - all the old addresses are still listed in Search after deleting Search History. Very frustrating...

[RonH]

I have sent a hopeful post to the Microsoft forum in ... hope.
Whilst I can delete unwanted addresses in the auto complete on a windows pc, I can find no way to delete in any android device. There must be a location within a programme web file (that we likely can't access) where one can trash any that are old/not valid/unwanted.