Wherever you go on the Web, Internet Explorer builds a history of the sites you visit and the pages you look at. The history list is handy if you want to revisit a Web site and can't remember the URL. The list also enables others to see the sites you've visited — a potential source of embarrassment. You can tweak history by editing or disabling the list.
To remove any Web site or specific Web page from the Internet Explorer history list, follow these steps:
1. Click the Favorites button in Internet Explorer.
2. Choose History (if necessary).
The history list appears on the left side of the browser window. Recently visited sites appear in time categories: 3 Weeks Ago, 2 Weeks Ago, Last Week, and Today.
3. Open a time category.
Within each category, you find a folder representing each Web site you visited. Within each folder are links to individual pages on the site.
4. Right-click any item you want to delete.
5. Choose Delete from the pop-up menu.
6. Click Yes in the warning dialog box if you’re asked to confirm.
The offending entry is gone.
Alas, the entry still may appear on the Address drop-down list. If so, continue reading in the next section.
- The Ctrl+H key combination can also be used to show the History list.
- The number of days the history list keeps track of is initially set to 20. This value can be adjusted, as covered in the section “Disabling history altogether,” just ahead in this article.
- Removing a History item isn’t the same thing as removing an Internet cookie.
Clearing all the history
People who don’t read history are doomed to repeat it. And, why not? Let’s just go and make those same mistakes over and over. It builds character, or something like that.
When the entries on the History list appear to be overwhelming, consider zapping them all:
1. Open the Control Panel.
2. From the Control Panel Home, choose Network and Internet, and then choose Internet Options; from the Control Panel Classic view, open the Internet Options icon.
The Internet Properties dialog box appears.
3. Click the Delete button.
It’s found in the Browsing History area. Clicking the button displays the Delete Browsing History dialog box.
4. Click the Delete History button.
5. Click Yes to confirm.
6. Click the Close button to dismiss the Delete Browsing History dialog box.
7. Click the OK button to make the Internet Properties dialog box go away.
For some reason, these steps do not completely erase your Internet history. No, the places you visited today aren’t removed. You can manually remove those items per the directions in the preceding section.
Disabling history altogether
When the History list is a complete and utter bother, just get rid of it:
1. Open the Control Panel.
2. From the Control Panel Home, choose Network and Internet, and then choose Internet Options; from the Control Panel Classic view, open the Internet Options icon.
The Internet Properties dialog box appears.
3. Click the Settings button in the Browsing History area.
4. Set the Days to Keep Pages in History option to 0.
This option is found at the bottom of the dialog box.
5. Click OK.
6. Click OK again to close the Internet Properties dialog box.
Although this technique eliminates history tracking for previous days, note that Internet Explorer still keeps track of the history today. So, if you have been somewhere today and you don’t want anyone to know about it before midnight, you still have to manually delete the entries, as covered in the section “Clearing places from the history,” earlier in this article.
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