Cannot Remove Email Auto Suggestions - Help Please

[hatrick8]

I am using the stock Gmail app on my brand new Motorola Edge Plus phone to access my NON-Gmail email account.

• Sync is turned off for contacts on my email server.
• I do not have my contacts sync'd to my email account. I don't want them sync'd. I don't need them sync'd.
• I have turned off permissions for the Gmail app to access contacts on the phone.
• I have cleared the app cache and app storage on my device.
• I have restarted my device.

Now, what's the problem? On my brand new phone, where there are 0 contacts saved, 0 email addresses saved, and there are 0 contacts in my email server email account, and the sync is turned off, anyway, I open my email application to send an email. I type one letter and 15 email addresses show up as suggested email addresses for the To: line.

Where did they come from? Well, best I can tell, they're email addresses from the last 50 or so emails in my inbox. Some of them are email addresses from emails I've received and never sent an email to, not even an email reply.

Better yet, how the heck do I get rid of all of those email address suggestions? This should not happen, at all. I don't have any contacts saved anywhere with my phone or my email account, yet, the phone is trying to give me email address suggestions. I don't want them. I just want to type an email address without having a huge list of possible emails to use because those emails happened to be in the last 50 or so emails I've received.

I've searched and searched and searched and cannot find any solutions. Everything I've found says to go to contacts.google.com (great, but this isn't a Google account, so that doesn't help), or to clear the cache, or to turn off sync, or to revoke permissions for the app to access contacts. I've done all of that. This is obviously a different problem. Does anybody have any solutions?

 

[VidJunky]

I may be mistaken but allow me to ask this, do you have emails from these addresses still saved/kept/held in this account? The reason I say I may be mistaken but it sounds like it is trying to guess whom you are addressing the email to by looking at the addresses of emails you already have.

I guess you could test this by looking through your emails and selecting an email from a one off source and beginning an email using the first letter and verifying if that address appeared as one of the selections. So for instance Johnson & Johnson sent you an email with a rebate. J&J aren't in any of your contacts but if you started an email to Jessy would J&J be in the suggestion list? This appears to be the case for me using the Samsung Email app.

Then the true question would be how to stop all autofill address suggestions? I cannot answer that except to say there are some things you could try like, looking for a one off email that is in a folder or move one to a folder and see if not having it in your actual in-box makes a difference. I was hoping to come up with two things but that's all I can think of, unless the email app has a setting for auto suggestions in its settings.

Here is a link to a discussion we attempted to have with someone else with this issue but they stopped replying... https://forums.androidcentral.com/a...l-address-people-ive-sent-email-new-post.html

 

[hatrick8]

Thanks for your reply. I did find that previous thread you linked during my search for answers. Nothing there was helpful.

One of the email addresses that is suggested is an address I haven't sent it received email from in about seven years. There may be an old email with that email address, but, wow, that would be so buried that I'm surprised the email app would scan that far back, and wouldn't pull other random old email addresses.

It seems like this should be an option to turn on or off, yet, I've looked and I cannot find anything about this. I've checked app settings. I've done many internet searches, looking for varying words to try to find anybody who has experience with disabling this "feature", and I get nothing. The majority of my search results are Gmail Contacts related answers. It's frustrating that everyone thinks deleting "Other Contacts" from Google Contacts should solve this issue, yet I don't use Google/Gmail contacts.

Hopefully someone else will see this and know something that will work. Again, thank you for taking your time to read and reply. I appreciate it.

 

[VidJunky]

I know what you mean about old addresses. I have an AOL account that I started using after years of using Gmail for everything and started typing and had an old address pop up from someone I hadn't emailed in years. I had really forgotten about them until seeing that address pop up.

Thinking about that brought up a thought, I know you say you've disallowed any connection to any contacts but you are still logged in to your account. It wouldn't be the app, it would be the account. Perhaps try logging into your account through a PC or laptop, you'll have more options than on a stripped down app interface, and look there for a way to clear your history or stop autofill. It would make sense, your account never forgets.

 

[hatrick8]

Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

I added a second email account to the mail app on the phone to test how it worked with another email from a different provider. It's doing to the same thing to the second account. Different email addresses are being pulled up, though, when I type the three same letter I type in the first account. It seems those email addresses that are only from emails on that account. For the record, doesn't matter which letter I type, "matching" email addresses are pulled up.

Based on that test, I'm leaning towards the app is doing this. It doesn't do this on the PC when I compose a new email through the browser. Only on my phone, through the app.

I'm thinking I may have to find a new mail app to use and to disable the stock Gmail app. The app itself seems to be holding the emails on storage without any mechanism to clear that storage. Others that have had this same issue who are looking for a resolution have not yet found a solution. I'm guessing the ones not looking for a resolution like the feature. I just wish there was a way to turn it off.

Would be nice if we could get this figured out, though, instead of just abandoning the app.

 

[Rukbat]

As far as "scanning that far back", a SQL SELECT statement "scans" the entire database - even if the first entry is 20 years old. (And the software that does the "scanning" is so efficient that scanning a 5,000 record database hardly takes longer than scanning a 1 record database (in human terms, anyway - we can't notice the difference between a 1 microsecond scan and a 5,000 microsecond scan).

If you want a suggestion for an email app, I use FairEmail. Aside from being the Android equivalent of Thunderbird (which I use in my PCs), the developer is very responsive. (And the app just works - even for multiple accounts - I have 9 in mine.)

 

[hatrick8]

Rukbat, you are indeed correct with respect to my "scanning" comment. My frustration with that particular issue is that when I type the letter that shows that old email address, it does not show my husband's email address. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what email addresses have been stored, and, it seems as though there's no way for me to clear that list.

Thank you for the suggestion to try FairEmail. I'll take a look. Question about FairEmail, do you happen to know if the Pro Version has a one time fee or is it a subscription? I don't mind paying for quality development, just like to know in advance if I'll be charged annually or not! Thanks again.