Stop Pasting Full Names When Copying an Email Address in Mac OS X Mail

May 3, 2012 - 16 Comments

Apple mail icon Ever noticed that when you copy an email address from OS X Mail app and paste it elsewhere that you get the addressees full name as well as their email address? Try it yourself by right-clicking on someones email address like someonesname@domain.com and copy it, then paste it elsewhere and it will show up as “Someones Name “, which can be fairly annoying if you just want an address.

To resolve this copy/paste annoyance from the Mac Mail app, launch Terminal and paste this line into the command line:

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool false

Then hit Return and you can quit the Terminal.

Relaunch Mail app for changes to take effect, then try to copy and paste an address. Only the email address should go to the clipboard now.

If you want to change this back to the default option, you can simply replace ‘false’ with ‘true’, or use a defaults delete string into the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.mail AddressesIncludeNameOnPasteboard -bool true

Again, relaunch Mail app for changes to take effect.

Thanks to Randy M for the tip

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

16 Comments

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  1. Mark says:

    Brilliant!

  2. Alejandro says:

    Doesn’t work in OS X 10.11.1 “El Capitan”. Suggestions?

  3. Alejandro says:

    Doesn’t work in El Capitan. Suggestions?

  4. Leyla Hill says:

    This doesn’t seem to work for Yosemite. Any idea how to code for that OS X and stop pasting the name and brackets? I just need the email address to paste, nothing else. Thank you!

  5. Jason says:

    Is there a terminal command to remove the “see more at OS X Daily” crap? :/

  6. Steve says:

    Does anybody know how to enable this copy email address only fix in Mavericks?

  7. Jonathan says:

    Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!

  8. Peter says:

    Thank you, superb tip. been winding me up for so long! Thank you again

  9. Gary says:

    Brilliant! This has been bugging me for years!

  10. Jasper050 says:

    Sorry not the right topic!

  11. Elder says:

    I’m going to take this opportunity to ask about a somehow related problem.

    For some reason the Mail app has stopped using all my Gmail contacts for auto-completion when I’m writing a new email. It only uses “My Contacts” but not the ones that Gmail categorizes as “Other Contacts”. The latter are the ones automatically created every time you share a few emails with a new person.

    This used to work but it stopped (maybe it was my fault, I don’t know). Does any one know how can I get this back?

  12. Brandi says:

    BIG, GIANT thank you!!!

  13. Craig says:

    Yeehaw!

  14. anderson says:

    Thank, thank, thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  15. Alberto says:

    Wow… cool trick! I was looking for something like this…
    Thanks

  16. Mathias says:

    Thank you!
    I had troubles with this for quite a while now ..

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