Deprecate, not delete, old addresses in Google Contacts

Question

Contacts sometimes sign up for a new email address. That doesn't mean that emails they sent to me from an old address are no longer from that contact. It just means they don't use that address any more.

I want to keep those old addresses associated with a contact. I just don't want to accidentally send emails to the old address because Gmail autofilled it in.

Is there any way to deprecate an old e-mail address so Gmail stops autofilling it in the To: box, but still knows that emails from that address came from that person?

Answer 1

I put quotation marks around the deprecated email addresses. This doesn't prevent Google from autofilling them in the To: box but you can easily spot and avoid them.

Answer 2

No, there's no way to include an email address as an email address without having it appear as an option when addressing a message.

You can move the email address to the "Notes" field, so you'll be able to search for that address and still find the person.

Probably more practical is to change the order of the email addresses on the contact so that the active ones are at the top and the inactive ones are at the bottom. That's the order they'll appear in the drop-down.