technical solutions and commentary

Outlook keeps a list of all the names and email addresses of people you have sent mail to in the past. Microsoft calls this the “nickname” and “auto completion cache” of Outlook.

There are two ways you can delete these names…

1. Search for the *.N2K file on the workstation and delete it. This is the cache file.
2. In Outlook, click the “New Mail Message” button. Type in the single letter such as “a”, this will display all the contacts and email addresses that are remembered — which start with the letter. Hold down the “delete” button to remove the names in the list. Repeat for each letter.

More resources:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287623
• http://www.robertkbrown.com/2006/01/26/cleaning_up_outlook_autofill.html