iOS Mail Autocomplete no longer works on new phone
December 8, 2021 9:10 AM Subscribe
Mrs. TheCoug was forced to get a new phone after her old one died. Now when composing an email, the Mail app no longer autocompletes addresses from before the update. Is there a way to import the autofill cache from an old backup? Or force it to build a new one?
iOS 15.1
GMail via iOS Mail
Response by poster: Contacts came over fine, but she doesn't actually use contacts for her business. In the past, she just used the auto complete feature to find peoples email addresses, and now that that doesn't work, she has to do a manual search for each client, then combine into a bcc. It works, but is VERY clunky, whereas before it just worked like magic.
posted by TheCoug at 11:36 AM on December 8, 2021
posted by TheCoug at 11:36 AM on December 8, 2021
I'm new to this corner of the iOS world so I went digging a bit. This thread on the Apple support forums gives some evidence of how the mail autocomplete address function works. My takeaways are:
1. What you see in that list is a combination of email addresses in your Contacts database and email addresses you've previously sent to
2. What's likely missing for Mrs. TheCoug is the "previous address" list
3. It looks like the "previous address" list is stored locally on the phone and in iCloud if you have "iCloud Contacts" turned on (it's not clear to me if that means that "Contacts" is turned on in the iCloud setting, or if Contacts is actually using iCloud as one of its accounts).
My beset guess is that if she's not using iCloud then she won't be able to get this info back. If she is still able to access the old phone she should be able to turn iCloud on over there, let it sync, then turn iCloud on with the new phone.
Going forward, however, the list should over time populate with the good data. If she wants that to continue into future phones, she should turn iCloud on now to save it.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:09 PM on December 8, 2021
1. What you see in that list is a combination of email addresses in your Contacts database and email addresses you've previously sent to
2. What's likely missing for Mrs. TheCoug is the "previous address" list
3. It looks like the "previous address" list is stored locally on the phone and in iCloud if you have "iCloud Contacts" turned on (it's not clear to me if that means that "Contacts" is turned on in the iCloud setting, or if Contacts is actually using iCloud as one of its accounts).
My beset guess is that if she's not using iCloud then she won't be able to get this info back. If she is still able to access the old phone she should be able to turn iCloud on over there, let it sync, then turn iCloud on with the new phone.
Going forward, however, the list should over time populate with the good data. If she wants that to continue into future phones, she should turn iCloud on now to save it.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:09 PM on December 8, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:01 AM on December 8, 2021