Clear Out Old Auto-Complete Entries

Outlook's auto-complete feature can help you get things done faster, but sometimes you need to delete old entries to keep it as useful as possible. There is a simple trick to doing exactly that and this page tells you how. Let's begin at the beginning:

When you start to enter addresses into Outlook, you will often see a list of possibilities. Outlook looks at what you have typed so far, and displays a list of possible addresses that match what you have typed so far. Outlook creates the list by remembering the addresses you have entered into the TO:, CC: or BCC: fields previously.

This can be a great time-saving tool, but there's one big problem with it: old addresses. Outlook has no way to know if an address is crucially important to you, or one that you no longer want.

It turns out that it's easy to remove addresses from this list once you know the trick. Here's how it is done:

Deleting Addresses from the Auto-Complete List

1. Make the address you want to delete visible by opening a message and entering characters of the address until Outlook displays the one you want to delete in the Auto-Complete list
   
   
2. Use the Up and Down arrow keys on the keyboard to select the address you want to delete. You must do this with the arrow keys, not the mouse.
   
   
3. Instead of pressing the Enter key to use this address, press the Delete key to delete the address from the list.