How To Remove Unwanted Email Addresses from Gmail
A Statista survey found that most people in the U.S. have two email addresses. Around 28% said they have more than four! With so many mail addresses, your contact list can get messy. You might see lots of suggested email addresses, which can be confusing. The best solution is to remove these unnecessary addresses immediately.
Step 1: Tap Google Contacts
You can do this in two ways:
- Visit the website: contacts.google.com and log in.
- Use your Gmail dashboard to select Contacts from Google's list of services.
Step 2: Look For the Unwanted Contacts
In Google Contacts, you will see a list of your saved contacts. To find the unwanted addresses, scroll through the list or use the search bar.
Step 3: Delete Email Addresses
Choose the address(es) you want to remove. Click the checkbox, click the three dots in the toolbar, and choose Delete.
Step 4: Confirm the Deletion
A prompt will ask if you want to delete the contact. Confirm by choosing the Delete button.
To permanently delete contacts in Gmail, empty the Trash in Google Contacts after deleting them.
Delete Unwanted Emails via Clean Email
Clean Email is a great soluiton for managing and cleaning your email inbox. This bulk email cleaner provides better value than Gmail's native features because the process is more optimized. Gmail's built-in features also fall short when dealing with large volumes of unwanted emails.
On the contrary, Clean Email groups messages by the sender across all folders, so you can bulk delete and remove all emails from an outdated address at once!
Step 1: Connect Your Gmail Account
Link your Gmail account to Clean Email. For easy access, you can use the Clean Email app on your mobile device.
Step 2: Check the Unwanted Email Addresses
Let’s say you’ve already cleaned your contact list and won’t have your autocomplete messed up anymore. But what about the emails from these senders? This is exactly where Clean Email can help!
Go to the Senders page, where you'll find a list of all the addresses that have ever emailed you. These can range from personal messages to promotional newsletters. There, you can delete all of their messages or choose to Block the address(es) and automatically move existing and future messages to Trash, so they don't clutter your inbox.
💡 Hint: Read our article for more tips on how to stop unwanted emails in Gmail.
Step 3: Bundle and Delete
Clean Email groups emails by sender, so you can quickly delete all messages from one address by creating a rule.
Suppose you don't have a specific mail address in mind to remove but want a cleaner inbox and contact list. In that case, you can use Clean Email's Cleaning Suggestions.
- Click Cleaning Suggestions from the app's home page. You can also access the feature from the left-hand navigation menu. Go to the Suggestions tab to access the feature.
- Clean Email will analyze your inbox management patterns and provide suggestions based on these behaviors.
- For each unwanted email address that you choose, you can move them to Trash, Archive, or perform other actions. Each suggestion offers an easy action to apply to the messages.
You have all the power to do what you want from these suggestions. You may decline them if you don’t like the idea. Just click the Dismiss icon to hide the suggestion, and Clean Email won't show it again.
If you agree and accept, Clean Email will automatically move or delete the emails based on your preference.
Furthermore, here’s what you should do if you want to mass unsubscribe from the unwanted emails:
- Click Unsubscriber in the left-hand pane.
- Tap Unsubscribe. Clean Email will send an unsubscribe request and move new messages from that sender to Trash. The default setting moves existing messages to Trash, but you can turn this off if you want to keep them.
- Click Confirm to complete the process.
There’s one more tool you’re going to love when Gmail's spam filter fails to be effective: Clean Email’s Screener feature. It intercepts emails from unknown senders and displays them in one spot for you to decide what to do with them.
How To Remove Old Addresses from Gmail's Autocomplete Feature
When you type the first characters in the To: field, Gmail activates the autocomplete feature. It will show the possible addresses based on how often you use them. While this feature can save time and help find old emails in Gmail, it can get overwhelming to see the outdated contacts all the time. Two methods exist to remove email addresses on Gmail's autocomplete feature.
Method 1: Delete via Google Contact
Start with your Other Contacts folder. Deleting the contact will remove it from the autocomplete list.
- Log into your Google account.
- Go to Google Contacts and go to the Other Contacts folder.
- Type the contact's name or email address in the search bar.
- Click the contact record.
- Click the three-dot icon on the right.
- Select Delete from the More Options menu.
- Click Delete again to confirm.
Method 2: Edit a Contact Email Address
If someone changes their contact details and you want to add the recent changes to your saved autofill list, you can edit their old email address.
- Log into your Google account.
- Go to Google Contacts.
- Search for the contact's name or mail address.
- Click the contact record.
- Click the blue Edit button.
- In the Email section, find the email address to remove.
- Click the X(Remove) next to the address.
- Click Save.
To ensure both actions work, log out of your Gmail account and sign back in.
How to Turn Off Autocomplete Contacts
If you'd prefer to turn off the autocomplete feature, follow these steps:
- Open Gmail on the web.
- Click the Gear icon in the top right to open Settings.
- Click See All Settings.
- Go to the General tab.
- Scroll down and look for Create contacts from auto-complete.
- Select I'll add contacts myself.
- Click Save Changes.
Wrap Up
Irrelevant or outdated email addresses can be a nuisance at best and a source of miscommunication at worst. Remove an address from the contact list on Gmail or block someone to break away from this trouble. You can use Gmail's native features for this, and for more control, Clean Email can help you block messages from unwanted senders and manage your inbox more effectively.
