Add Mac OS X Auto-Complete List Addresses to Your Address Book

It's easy to add them all at once to your email contacts

By
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Heinz Tschabitscher
Writer
  • University of Vienna
A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.
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Updated on December 6, 2019
Mac Mail app shown running on macOS Sierra
Screen shot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc.

When you start to type a recipient's address or name in OS X Mail, the app already seems to know how to end what you just began—even though the contact might not even be in your address book. Just because you don't see these contacts in your address book doesn't mean they aren't stored. OS X mail caches every email address to which you've ever sent a message. You might want to make them more accessible by adding them to your address book.

Given that OS X Mail obviously recognizes all these recipients, you might think importing them should be easy. Good news: You're right. You can harvest OS X Mail's vast memory of all the people you have emailed to build your contact list in just a few steps.

Add Addresses From OS X Mail's Auto-Complete List to the Address Book

To copy contact info from OS X Mail's auto-complete list to its address book:

  1. Select Window > Previous Recipients from the menu in OS X Mail.
  2. Highlight all desired addresses. You can highlight multiple addresses by holding down the Option key while clicking.
  3. Press Shift to select an address range.
  4. Click Add to Contacts (or Add to Address Book).
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