in the To field, it seems like outlook has learned every single sender and recipient of every single email in every single mailbox. so if I type "a", outlook suggests email addresses that start with A for ~100 people, most of whom I haven't sent emails to or received emails from since outlook 2007, four computers ago. but emails to and from these people do exist in my gmail imap and/or Hotmail activesync and/or exchange mailboxes, so if I set up a new outlook profile and add these accounts, outlook apparently memorizes all the addresses and suggests them to me.

is this expected? i don't remember previous versions of outlook doing this. is there a way to turn this off so it only suggests my contacts? or only suggests people that *this* copy of outlook has sent or received emails to or from?

 

This is Outlook AutoCompleted function since Outlook 2003. We may try a third party tool to check how much nickname has cached in your mailbox. for example, NK2view. Please note that this product is provided by a third party provider which is independent of Microsoft. We cannot provide any guarantee for the use. Your understanding would be appreciated.

I would explain that the nickname cache is stored in local machine in Outlook 2003/2007. (*.nk2 file); In Outlook 2010/2013, the nickname is cached in user's mailbox and map the data to local autostreaming file.

If you want to disable the auto-complete and only enable suggested contact, please perform this:

To disable the autocomplete list by editing the registry, you need to set the ShowAutoSug data value to 0. Administrators can disable it for all users using GPO.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\office\15.0\Outlook\Preferences
DWORD: ShowAutoSug
Value: 0

Enable Suggested Contacts, the CreateContactsForOneOffs data value is set to 1 in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\office\15.0\Outlook\Contact
DWORD: CreateContactsForOneOffs
Value: 1

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
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I know that autocomplete has been around for a while.

what i'm saying is New is that outlook 2013 is using every email address from every email in all my mailboxes for autocomplete, even if I've never actually sent emails to those addresses before. so if I type "tony" into the "to" field, I get every tony who's been in the recipient list of every forwarded bulk email I've ever received, rather than only tonys I've emailed recently or the tonys in my contacts. so I get a list of 20 tonys to scroll through to find the handful of tonys I actually know.

if I type 'tony' into the "to" field in the instance of outlook 2010 I used for the three years prior to using outlook 2013, it only suggests the four tonys who are either in my contacts or to whom I have actually sent emails.

I would expect that if the autocomplete behavior was the same between outlook 2010 and 2013, then the 2010 I used for *three years* would suggest at least as many tonys as the 2013 I just started using a couple of weeks ago.

Well, I know you better. I believe thhe hehavior of autocomplete in Outlook 2013 is the same as Outlook 2010 does. The only difference now is Outlook 2013 has the new function called contact linking that allows you to link a contact with any appointment, task, other contacts, or even email. That might be the causes of this behavior but I'm not so sure in this case.

At this point, I recommand that you run NK2view and check whether there are many "Tony" cached in your auto-complete streaming indeed. If yes, please remove the extra "Tony" from the list, go back to Outlook to send a message "Tony", re-check if that the removed "Tony" would appear again.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
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Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

Hi,

Just checking in to see if the information was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

Well, I don't know what "Well, I know you better" means, but as I just explained, the behavior is not the same between outlook 2010 and outlook 2013. I can send screenshots if you like.

also, the 'problem' autocomplete addresses do not appear in nk2view. honestly the list in nk2view looks completely believable on the 2013 machine... as though it only contains people I've actually sent emails to.

so, as an example, if I type "dan" into the To box in 2013, it suggest someone named Dana whom I haven't emailed in about a decade. (outlook 2010 does not suggest dana). in nk2view on the 2013 box (or the 2010 box), there is no "dana" at all, in any column.

in fact, nk2view on my old outlook 2010 box has more entries in nk2view than the new outlook 2013 box does. which makes sense, since I used it for a much longer time. so it doesn't make sense that outlook 2013 suggests way more garbage recipients 'To' me than 2010 does.

so outlook 2013 is autocompleting things that are not in the nk2 file. next step is finding out where it's storing them and/or how to turn it off. thoughts?