How to clear the email auto-complete entries in Windows Mail

Question

When I start typing a To: address, Windows Mail provides a list of all previously used addresses. But some of the addresses (which are not in my address book) I don't want there any more. How can I now get rid of those entries that I no longer want?

Answer

Windows Mail stores the list of recently used mail addresses in the following registry location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows Mail \ Recently Used Addresses

Each mail address is stored in a separate binary value (value names start with a, b, c ... and so forth), in the right pane of the above key.

Deleting a particular entry

Click Start, type regedit.exe and press {ENTER}. In the Registry Editor window, navigate to the above registry key. To delete a particular mail address, you need to double-click each binary value to see the mail address (as in the figure below:)

Once you spot the correct entry, right-click on the corresponding value and choose Delete

Deleting all the email auto-complete entries

To clear all the email auto-complete entries, you may delete the Recently Used Addresses key itself. Use these steps:

Click Start, type the following command and press {ENTER}

cmd /k reg delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Recently Used Addresses" /f

Type EXIT to close the Command Prompt window.