How do I stop Outlook from auto-populating email addresses?

Question

How do I stop Outlook from auto-populating email addresses?

Jennifer Morgan 0

More than once, I have been bitten because the To email address is populated with a name close to the intended recipient, and I have not caught it. How do I stop this auto-action?

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Senthil kumar 2,330

Hi @Jennifer Morgan

Outlook desktop

File → Options → Mail → scroll to “Send messages” → uncheck “Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines.” You can also clear the existing list with the “Empty Auto-Complete List” button, which removes stale/wrong cached addresses.

Outlook (web) / Microsoft 365

Settings → Mail → Compose and reply → turn off suggestions, or clear individual bad entries by hovering the suggestion and clicking the X.

Thanks.

Hornblower409 14,425 Reputation points

2026-07-31T07:40:41.2166667+00:00

@Senthil kumar said

Outlook (web) / Microsoft 365 - ... clear individual bad entries by hovering the suggestion and clicking the X

Microsoft has removed the ability to delete a single entry from your Autocomplete/Suggested People List (the drop down of suggested email addresses you see when you start typing in the "To:" field).

Previously there was an "X" to the right of an Autocomplete entry that would remove it from the list. Now the only method to get rid of a incorrect or out of date Autocomplete entry is to erase the whole list.

See the Answer by "Hornblower409 May 1 2026" - "How to convert your Autocomplete List to Contacts and erase the List" at
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5871874/manually-removing-an-email-address-from-the-sugges?orderby=newest&page=1#answers

Answer 2

Disable auto-complete settings in Outlook

Details at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/outlook/contacts/outlook-autocomplete-list

To access the AutoComplete setting, follow these steps:

On the File menu, select Options.

Select the Mail tab.

Scroll down until you see Send messages. Make sure that the Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines box is checked.

Screenshot of Send messages window, with the Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines option checked.

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hth

Marcin