Mail Tip: Find an Email Address with Previous Recipients

Have you ever sent an email to someone and then needed to find their email address? Sure you could look in your sent items, but what if you have Mail set to delete sent emails after a period of time, or don’t save your sent messages at all? Here’s a clever trick that I just learned about: the Previous Recipients window. To go to this window, click on the Window menu, then Previous Recipients.

The layout of this window is pretty simple. Addresses are displayed in four column view: name of the recipient, email address, address book status and the date from the last time you sent them an email. To find your missing address, use the search box in the top-right corner. If you think you’ll be using this address more and more, click the “Add to Address Book” button. Mail will add a new contact with the name and email address already entered for you.

Now you can find that missing email address in a quick, easy-to-use window, built right into Mail.