MIT Email Lists & Outlook

Email at MIT is a mix of old and new technologies. Our email lists are managed by a homegrown database called Moira. While our email storage is managed by commerical product called Microsoft Exchange. Sometimes updates to Moira never make it to Microsoft Exchange and its Microsoft Outlook clients. When this happens email sent to a mailing list in Microsoft Outlook is returned in error because Microsoft Outlook has cached the incorrect destination of the mailing list. This issue does not effect other email clients, web mail, or sender's outside the MIT community. To correct this issue and delete the errant address from Outlook's cache please follow theses steps.

Delete an Address From the Outlook Autocomplete List

1. Create a new email message in Outlook
2. Start typing the name or address you want to remove
3. Use the down arrow key (↓) to highlight the desired (undesired) entry
4. Press Del or hover the mouse cursor over the entry you want to remove and click the X that appears to its right

How to Prevent Outlook Address Autocompletion Altogether

1. Click File in Outlook
2. Select Options
3. Go to the Mail category.
4. Make sure Use Auto-Complete List to suggest names when typing in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines is not checked under Send messages

Feel free to share these instructions with members of the MIT community who are unable to send mail to VPF's mailing lists using the Outlook client.