clearing typed history

[kyta]

Hi,
I am trying to clear my computer of the recent things I have typed into the search buttons. When I type in the Letter "k" for example I get drop down list to pick from....that is what I would like to clear.
Thanks, Kyta

 

[VirtualMe]

See if this will do it.

Go to Internet Options from the Control Panel, and do this:

* Click Clear History on the General tab
* Click Delete Files on the General tab
* Click Autocomplete, Clear Forms on the Content tab

 

[AbvAvgUser]

Are you talking about "Find" in start menu? Well, according to me, the list gets stored in registry. There's one way to find out where.

Just type any unique set of characters (like wekcxzsa) there and click on search. Of course it won't return any results.

Now go to Start > Run and type Regedit, registry will open up. Search for the unique word that you typed earlier in the registry. You will find it there. Delete that word and other things that you want to delete from there.

But be careful when you are dealing with registry. If you mess around with it too much, your machine may refuse to start. If you are not confident, take help of someone who has played with Regedit earlier.

 

[ckaas]

i dont know if there is a way of clearing all of them at once, what i do know is that if you click on a blank search box, a whole list of the things you've typed will appear, all you have to do is mouse over the first, then press the "Del" key repeatedly until they're all gone.

 

[Deke40]

Read the following then decide what you want to do:

Typed URL's are located in this registry key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs

In the right pane you will see the entrys...right click on the one you want to delete and click delete.

One problem is this...if you delete one from the middle of the list the ones below it will no longer show...to resolve this do this...

Right click on the last one in the list and select rename and give it the number of theone you deleted...when you exit the registry the numbers will be put in order and the rest of the list will show.

Backup first and be careful in the registry

Courtesy of buck

I did some more research and found this in a November 2000 posting :There are 2 ways that address may remain to be seen by others.
1) If you hit the drop down arrow, and see a bunch of addresses that you want to get rid of, these can be deleted by clearing the history in Internet Explorer:

Go to "Tools" then "Internet Options" then use the "Clear History" Button or just to clear the dropdown list in the searchbar to to Start/Settings/Taskbar & Start Menu/Start Menu Programs/click Clear.

2) The second way that an old address will come back to haunt you:
If you start to type, and the address of a site that you have visited before, appears in the address bar(this happens if you have Autocomplet on), then the site is stored in your favorites folder, and needs to be deleted from there.

If you don't want anyone to see where you've been surfing, clear the history, and don't store these pages in your favorites, because even if you give them a different name in favorites, the real url will appear on your address bar when you type the first few letters of it.

END OF QUOTE

I probably did an overkill but I exported my favorites and cookies then deleted both and went into DOS and did a deltree of index.dat, history, and cookies. The only urls that came up when I start typing were two shortcuts I had on my desktop and shortcuts on my taskbar. The only problem is when you put your favorites back,the urls come back. At least you now know how to be rid of the little devils for as long as you can get by without your favorites.

This is probably more than you ask for but it explains why the urls come back.