If you’re like most people, you use Outlook to manage your email, calendar, and contacts. And one of the features that Outlook offers is auto-complete. This feature helps you fill in the names of people or addresses quickly. But if you find that auto-complete is getting in your way, there are a few things that you can do to disable or clear it. Here’s how: To disable auto-complete in Outlook, open the Mail, Calendar, Contacts window and click on the name of the person or contact that you want to disable auto-complete for. Then click on the gear icon (the three lines in a circle) and select Options from the menu that appears. In the Options window that opens, scroll down until you see the AutoComplete section and uncheck the box next to it. If you want to clear all of your auto-completed entries at once, click on Clear All AutoComplete Entries at once in the AutoComplete section of the Options window. ..
The Auto-Complete feature in Outlook automatically fills in names and email addresses for you when entering them in the To or Cc fields. Based on the characters you start to enter, Outlook displays a list of possible choices that match what you’ve entered.
You can then either click the desired email address from the list or press Enter to insert the email address in the list.
The Auto-Complete feature can save you time if you compose a lot of emails and have a lot of contacts in your address book. However, you do have to be careful when using the feature, so you don’t accidentally select the wrong email address and send an email to the wrong person. If you don’t want to use this feature, you can easily disable it, empty all of the suggestions, or remove individual suggestions.
Disable Auto-Complete Entirely
To disable the Auto-Complete feature, open Outlook and switch to the “File” menu.
On the sidebar, click the “Options” command.
In the Outlook Options window, click the “Mail” category on the left. On the right, scroll down to the “Send messages” section.
To disable the Auto-Complete feature, untick the “Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines” checkbox.
You can re-enable the feature at any time by checking the option again.
Empty the Auto-Complete List of Everything
Outlook keeps track of email addresses you have used in an Auto-Complete List. You can clear this list by clicking the “Empty Auto-Complete List” button.
In the confirmation window, click “Yes” if you want to clear the list.
Remove Individual Entries From the Auto-Complete List
If you just want to remove a specific entry from the list but don’t want to remove the entire list, you can delete an entry right from the auto-complete list. In the To or Cc field of an open message window, start typing the name you want to remove. When the auto-complete entry pops up, click the “X” on the right-hand side (or hit your Delete key).
If you’ve been bugged in the past because Outlook suggests inaccurate names or names you don’t need anymore, it’s easy enough to clean them up.
