Deleting Outlook cached address on Office 365

[Nick Inglis]

Hi there.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice on deleteing the cached or stored email address on an Office 365 users account. I'm talking about when a user uses the web version of outlook and clicks the To box on a new email. If they start typing a name, say Bob, then a small list appears of email addresses that the user has recently sent too. Is there away of clearing this cached list though. 

I work at a school and have a new teacher that's just started. I issued her a new account but wasn't made aware though that the teacher had actually worked at the school before. Thus other teachers are emailing her but selecting the old address. Thus emails aren't getting through and its the end of the world. lol

Any advice would be great. 

Thanks

N

[#2]

Hey @Nick Inglis,

Unfortunately this is going to be a bit manual either way.

1. The "correct" way to do this is on each users computer/account, just for the old email address. In essence you would want them to start typing the new teachers name, lets say "New Teacher." When they start typing they would get the option to auto-complete using the old address that is cached. They would want to mouse over this, and click, then hit the delete key. (it is in essence the same steps as if you were clearing this out of an outlook client.) Once they have highlighted the old autocomplete, and deleted, that cached address/entry will be gone, and the next time they go to fill in the to field for New Teacher, it will work the client to look into the GAL, find the new address, and should work.

This would have to be done for each user. I would probably put together a quick video showing yourself doing it (powerpoint has a great insert screenshare functionality to do this), or just type up instructions. Something like 1. Log into OWA 2. Start a new email 3.Start typing in new teachers name until you see the auto complete option 4. Select the address to autocomplete 5. While still highlighted hit the delete key 

You could also technically get around this by clearing the entire cache too, which I would not recommend.

Adam

[#3]

Well, you can technically clear entries from the OWA cache via EWS, Michel has a script about it here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Clearing-AutoComplete-and-92b8d32a#content

Problem is the script will scrap the entire cache, and in your case that's a bit excessive. But you can modify the script to just delete that one entry I guess.

[#4]

Thanks for your updates. 

Can I ask, does the PS script clear specific users caches? Or everyone on my tenancy? I'm not to great with Powershell I'm afraid so thought I'd ask.

[#5]

Hey @Nick Inglis,

It looks like you specify the mailbox to clear, here is an example of the call:

Remove-AutoComplete.ps1 -Mailbox olrik@office365tenant.com -Credentials $Credentials 

But as my friend @Vasil Michev mentions, just be sure you understand this will delete ALL saved auto completes, not just the incorrect one.

Adam

[#6]

Yup, clears the entire contents of the cache for specific user, not just select entries. And I'm afraid just knowledge in PowerShell is not enough for this one, you also need to have some experience with EWS if you want to modify it.