How to Stop Gmail from Auto-Completing the Wrong Contact

You typed the first few letters of a name and Gmail filled in an address you have not used in years, or a stranger who once cc'd you. The wrong assumption is that this comes from your contact list. Most of these suggestions come from a hidden group called Other contacts that Gmail fills in on its own every time you reply to someone. Removing the address from your contacts does nothing because it was never there. Here is how to get rid of it for good.

Hide the suggestion from the compose box

On the web, click Compose and type the name in the To field. When the wrong address appears in the list, right-click it and choose Hide suggestion. It disappears from the list immediately and the address is not deleted anywhere, so you can bring it back later by typing the name and clicking Show hidden suggestions.

In the Gmail app on Android or iPhone, tap Compose, type the name, then touch and hold the wrong entry in the list and tap Hide suggestion.

Delete the address from Other contacts

Hiding is per suggestion. If the same person has three stale addresses, delete them at the source instead. Go to contacts.google.com on a computer and click Other contacts in the left sidebar. If you do not see it, click More first to expand the list.

Find the address, open it, click More at the top right and choose Delete. If you want to keep the person but fix the address, click Add to contacts instead, then edit the entry so the good address is the only one on it.

Stop Gmail from saving new ones

Without this step the address comes back the next time you reply to that person. In Gmail on the web, click the gear icon, open the full settings page, and stay on the General tab. Scroll to Create contacts for auto-complete, select I'll add contacts myself, then click Save changes at the bottom.

That switch only covers Gmail. To stop every Google app from doing it, open your Google Account, go to People & sharing, then Contact info saved from interactions, and turn off Save contact info when you interact with people. On Android the same page is at Settings, Google, your name, Manage your Google Account.

Check the entry that keeps winning

If the right address still loses to the wrong one, the two are on separate contact cards and Gmail ranks the one you emailed most recently. Open the good contact in Google Contacts and add the address you want at the top. Delete the other card, then send one message to the correct address so it moves to the top of the ranking.

If the wrong address comes from a shared work directory. On a Google Workspace account, some suggestions come from your organization's directory and cannot be hidden or deleted by you. Ask your admin to fix the directory entry.

If you also use the Contacts app on iPhone or Android. Phone contacts synced to the Google account show up in Gmail too. Fix or delete the stale address in the phone's contacts app as well, or it will keep syncing back.