Auto-complete email address problem in Windows Mail

[Meehan Mydog]

Hi,

I haven't got Vista myself, but I'm doing my best to help a neighbour
who's first computer came with it pre-installed.

She came to me with a problem today, which was that she couldn't send an
email to her daughter. I looked at the message failure messages she'd
received and it was pretty obvious what was wrong:- There were spaces in
the email address she was trying to send to.

I advised her as such, but she said, "But I only typed in 's' and the email
program did the rest."

I replicated the problem and, sure enough, Windows Mail was doing
exactly as she said. Upon typing the first letter of the recipient, it
completed the address field, with an email address that was full of spaces.

I looked for her address book, and found Contacts of course. As far as I
could tell, the entry in her contacts folder for her daughter was
correct; it contained her correct email address, without any spaces.
Just to be sure, I deleted the entry and created it again with the
correct email address.

But Windows Mail _still_ auto-completes with the incorrect email
address, and I have no idea where it is picking it up from. It doesn't
even offer the address which I entered into the contacts folder as an
alternative.

The correct address is (e-mail address removed). The one that Windows Mail
keeps auto-completing to is susan xxxxx xxxxxxx @ hotmail . com

Has anyone any idea what might be going wrong here at all please?

Thanks in advance,
Robin
Cheshire, UK

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I haven't got Vista myself, but I'm doing my best to help a neighbour
who's first computer came with it pre-installed.

She came to me with a problem today, which was that she couldn't send an
email to her daughter. I looked at the message failure messages she'd
received and it was pretty obvious what was wrong:- There were spaces in
the email address she was trying to send to.

I advised her as such, but she said, "But I only typed in 's' and the
email
program did the rest."

I replicated the problem and, sure enough, Windows Mail was doing
exactly as she said. Upon typing the first letter of the recipient, it
completed the address field, with an email address that was full of
spaces.

I looked for her address book, and found Contacts of course. As far as I
could tell, the entry in her contacts folder for her daughter was
correct; it contained her correct email address, without any spaces.
Just to be sure, I deleted the entry and created it again with the
correct email address.

But Windows Mail _still_ auto-completes with the incorrect email
address, and I have no idea where it is picking it up from. It doesn't
even offer the address which I entered into the contacts folder as an
alternative.

The correct address is (e-mail address removed). The one that Windows Mail
keeps auto-completing to is susan xxxxx xxxxxxx @ hotmail . com

Has anyone any idea what might be going wrong here at all please?

Thanks in advance,
Robin
Cheshire, UK

Autocompletion of addresses uses a separate list of the last 29 addresses
you sent messages to, not the contacts list. To get rid of an incorrect
address, you have to send 29 messages to correct addresses.

If you want to use the contacts list to provide some of these addresses,
start a new message and don't type part of the address. Instead, click
on Tools and then Select Recipients in the new message window.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Besides the contacts list, Windows Mail keeps a separate list of
the last 29 addresses you've sent to, which is the list used for auto-
completion. That list is kept in the registry, and is not readily accessible
for editing. If you are comfortable with editing the registry, the pertinent
key is:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail\Recently Used Addresses

I would simply delete that key instead of trying to edit its data values.

 

[Meehan Mydog]

Thanks to you both for that. I'll have a go at deleting that key tomorrow.

Thanks again.

ps. Any idea why 29?

 

[Meehan Mydog]

Further to my last, I note that a reply on another thread, in response
to another poster with the same problem, seemed to recommend Windows
_Live_ Mail.

I must admit, I hadn't heard of that.

Is it a straight update of Windows default email client, following on
from OE and WM, or is it more of a web-based thing?

I've just spent the last six months getting her reasonably proficient on
WM... would installing WML be too much of a change, or is it pretty much
the same thing in different wrapping?

Thanks in advance,
Robin
Cheshire, UK

 

[Guest]

Further to my last, I note that a reply on another thread, in response to
another poster with the same problem, seemed to recommend Windows _Live_
Mail.

I must admit, I hadn't heard of that.

Is it a straight update of Windows default email client, following on from
OE and WM, or is it more of a web-based thing?

I've just spent the last six months getting her reasonably proficient on
WM... would installing WML be too much of a change, or is it pretty much
the same thing in different wrapping?

Thanks in advance,
Robin
Cheshire, UK

Windows Live Mail is Microsoft's new email program, largely Windows
Mail with some of the problems corrected. It, and Outlook Express,
can connect to sites that insist on using the HTTP protocol; Windows
Mail cannot.

Note that there are about three programs sharing the WLM abbreviation,
though; make sure you get the right one, in any.

http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Take a look at that registry key, and you'll see why. Microsoft used the
27 letters in the alphabet as an index, plus they threw in a few other symbols
for good measure.