How do I delete items from Internet Explorer's auto-complete list?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

I spent hours trying to delete the dropdown list. I cleared the history etc. Call me stupid but I realised eventually that the only addresses showing in the list were ones that were stored in my favourites. So if you have are sites in your favourites which you do not want to appear when you type, the best thing to do is rename the favourite and start it with an uncommonly used symbol such as ^. For example, "DoNotTellMyWife.com" should be renamed "^DoNotTellMyWife.com" in the favourites list. Hope this helps.

- Download the free internet explorer histor viewer from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iehv.html
-this will load the index that is used for both the internet explorer history and autocomplete.
-items can then be deleted from the list.

I have done the http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iehv.html website and downloaded the utility for free and it worked. It took like 2 minutes. All you have to do is download the utility, unzip it to a folder, click on the exe file, check the boxes that you want to delete and then delete them with the X at the top. It works very well.

How do i delete item from my Favorites List that I no longer want on the list?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Right click on the item in the list and then click on Delete
in the menu that pops up.

Leo

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFIVaihCMEe9B/8oqERAscyAJ4wzuduYbZ1xV6hXoA5XZ1A7Km54gCeIcmZ
s+4CpyWdoffeoXQX8pxnaWk=
=VrQD
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

If you want to remove all of he items, then un check the "forms" part of the autocomplete settings in Tools.

If it's just one or two items, from the google seach, simply type in the first letter of the search item, so it shows. use the cursor keys to move down to the item you want to remove then press the Delete Button!

Chris

Hi,

I had the same problem. I deleted the entry from the registry and then I did a search on my history (click the history icon on the ie and then click search) for the annoying URL (it was a misspell of a link I usually type a lot). Finally I just right clicked and delete and it stopped showing it on the addressbar when I started typing.
The autocomplete is probably done using the registry, and links infavourites & History... So you should delete it from all in which it appears...

Hope this helps!

Releasing the history from the 'ctrl H' feature is really helpful. I did not realize how long the memory is kept there - I wonder if that has any bearings on the speed of the system; as all of that would take up some disk space.
Thanx Leo!

I had a problem recently with urls appearing and not being cleared after the normal means of clearing history etc.. i decided to remove all the homepages used for IE it went to blank. I immediately lost all the urls that were permanently on the IE browser. I am not sure if this is a permanent fix but my browser is clear of the clutter.

Not a computer whiz so I need simple directions.Just did update on Windows and do not like having history and favorites in my address bar. How do I keep only visited sites like the "old days"???

To post a comment on "How do I delete items from Internet Explorer's auto-complete list?", please return to that article's main page.