For several years, Apple Mail would specify the wrong name for the “To” field when sending email messages. It was very frustrating and confusing for numerous reasons. Whatever I tried to resolve the issue, nothing seemed to work. So for years using Apple Mail, which for the most part works very well, I was stuck sending messages that specified incorrect names for the “To” field. Well praise the Lord, today I found a simple solution that finally resolves the issue.
tl;dr
Open the Contacts app and add or edit so the email recipient has the correct name.
Explanation
Here is what would happen. When composing a new message, I select the “To:” field and begin typing the address so auto-complete can bring up a list of available/known addresses. The list shows all of the email addresses that it knows about, along with their associated names. That is all fine and good. Most of the addresses in the list are associated with the correct name. BUT for some weird reason, some of my email addresses were associated with incorrect names.
For example, when choosing a “To” address from the list, I want to find this:
charlie@example.com (Charlie Brown)..that would be the correct address and name to which I want to send the message. But instead of that, I would get the following:
charlie@example.com (Bugs Bunny)..which is incorrect. Every time I would send an email to Charlie Brown, the wrong name would be associated with the “To” address. So the recipient would think I had made a mistake, or was incompetent, or some other problem or issue. And this bug would happen for numerous addresses, apparently completely randomly.
Like most people who work online, I send lots of email every day. So this weird glitch was confusing and frustrating for several years, but I just lived with it because I could not find a solution. Fortunately, today (Christmas day!) I found a fix that is so easy and simple that I kick myself for not figuring it out sooner.
Solution
To resolve the Apple Mail wrong name bug for any name and email address:
- Open the Contacts app (macOS or iOS)
- Add or edit the recipient so the name matches the email address
- Save changes and done
I’ve done this for several recipients and tested on multiple devices. So far, it works perfectly. Let me know in the comments if you have any further/related information regarding this issue, thank you.
The only downside is that you need to edit or add the contact information for each name and address that is incorrect, which could be many. Before today, like for many years, I never even touched the Contacts app, never had any need for it. Probably explains why I didn’t think of using it to resolve this issue sooner.
In any case, now that I know it is directly involved in crafting accurate email messages, Contacts is my new favorite app /s. It just feels good to address people by their correct names lol.
Notes
If you have multiple recipients in your Contacts app, Apple Mail will use the first one as the Name/Address for the “To” field. So delete/edit accordingly.
