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Guide to Internet Explorer
Favorites


| The Tool Bars | Working with Favorites |
| Searching | Organizing | Adding to the Favorites |
| Links Personal Tool Bar | Sorting Favorites |


The Tool Bars

This brief guide to Internet Explorer Favorites will show you how to make the most of the powerful features. The Links bar (item 5 in Figure 1, below) is extremely useful for keep important sites at your fingertips. The ability change the label of a site as you bookmark it enhances retrieval later on since you can enter all the text you may need to later identify the site. The ability to sort Favorites makes browsing your collection easier, as well as helping you weed out duplicates.

 


Figure 1: The Five Internet Explorer Toolbars


 

  1. The Title bar, which contains the formal title of a web page. This text comes from the title tag, embedded in the HTML code.
  2. Menu bar
  3. Button bar - Navigation
  4. Address bar - The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the Page. The URL is the address of the web page.
  5. Links Bar - instant access to selected favorites


Working with Favorites


Figure 2: Organizing Favorites


In the Favorites Window (Figure 2) you can edit and delete entries and folders. Searching favorites is a little difficult.
Favorites/Organize Favorites opens the Favorites window. You can edit an entry, changing the name andURL These bits of information are called the properties. To change a name or URL, RIGHT (opposite) click on the entry and select properties from the pop up menu.

Default Entries
Browsers arrive with pre-set favorites in place, usually to a selection of commercial sites. I recommend you delete these favorites or create a folder, named commercial and drag all those favorites into it.To delete a favorite just click once on the entry, to highlight it, then press the Delete key.

Editing Favorites: the Properties
Often it's useful to change the name of a favorite or to update the URL when the owner changes the location of the page.
  1. Open the favorites: Favorites/Organize Favorites
  2. Click to highlight the entry you want to edit and select properties from the pop up menu.
  3. Enter the changes and click the OK button to close the edit window.


Searching Favorites

This search actually occurs outside of Internet Explorer and is more a function of Microsoft Windows than Internet Explorer.

Click on the Start Button
Select Find / Files or Folders

image of the Find window
Figure 3: The Find window

  1. Enter a keyword (search term) you recall being part of a favorite name
  2. Look in refers to where on the hard drive you want to perform the search.Use the Browse button, 2a. to point at, or just type the entry you see in Figure 3. You will need to follow that exact path, to c:\windows\favorites. (it doesn't matter if you type the path in upper, lower or mixed case)
  3. Click the Find Now button
  4. And see the results of the search in the lower part of the window.


Organizing Favorites with Folders

You can create, edit,delete folders. You can drag favorites in and out of folders. As you add a web page to the favorites, you can immediately file it in a folder. You can edit the name of the entry as you file it and can be extremely useful.

The text label in the favorites comes from a special command embedded into the HTML code of a web page. This is called the title tag and its function is to assign a formal, bibliographic title to the web page. You may not want to use that text as your label in the favorites, or you may want to add text to it (this can often be useful later when you're searching for a specific entry).

You can use drag and drop to arrange the list of folders and to add and move marks to and from folders and to alphabetize folders and entries.

  • Create folders: In the Organize Window select Create Folder
  • Edit folders: Select the Rename button.


Adding Entries to Favorites

On the web page you want to bookmark, click the RIGHT mouse button. A small menu will pop up containing an option to Add to Favorites. This approach will place the web page link at the bottom of your Favorites list.

A better way to bookmark a page is to add the page as Favorite directly into a subject folder.

Adding Entries Directly to a Folder

While you are on the web page you want to add to the favorites,
  1. Click on the Favorites button
  2. Select Add to Favorites
  3. In the Add Favorite window you can edit the label for the entry, click to highlight the folder you want to file it in, or even create a new folder to file it in.


Links: Your Personal Tool Bar of Favorites

In Figure 1, the fifth toolbar serves as a quick list of links to web sites. You can enter a single URL or you can add a folder of links. The links tool bar may not be readily apparent. It may be hidden at the far right end of the fourth toolbar, the Address bar.

Initially you links bar may be hidden, appearing as a small icon at the right-end of the fourth toolbar row. Figure 4 shows the Links bar as an icon.

Image of the MSIE Toolbars
Figure 4: The Links Toolbar as an Icon

The red arrow in Figure 4 is pointing to a vertical bar that is part of the Links icon. Use that vertical bar to drag the icon down to become the fifth toolbar on your window.

  1. Click and hold the mouse on the vertical bar in the Links icon.
  2. Drag the icon down below that fourth toolbar row.
  3. As you drag the icon down you will se it form the fifth row of the toolbars.
  4. Once that row is in place, let go of the mouse button.

Now the toolbar is in place and you're ready to work with it. If the Links folder already contains links to site I recommend you delete them or move (drag) them into another folder. These are probably commercial site that have paid for this placement. After you remove any that you wish to remove, you are ready to add your own sites. Follow the directions noted above for saving and organizing favorites. But any that you wish to have readily at hand, in this special toolbar, must be placed in the Links folder.


Sorting Favorites

The approach to sorting, or alphabetizing, the Favorites varies depending upon the version of WIndows and Internet Explorer in use. On newer versions of Windows, which contain newer versions of IE, the Favorites are sorted in the browser. The command to alphabetize favorites in older versions of Windows and IE is not IN the browser: it's used from the Start menu. See Figure 5, below.

Sorting Favorites on Older Computers
(Windows 98, IE Version 5)


Figure 5: Sorting Favorites on Older Versions of Windows and IE

  1. Click on the Start menu
  2. Swoop up to Favorites (the Favorites may be listed directly on the Start menu, or it might be on the Control Panel, which is accessible on the Start menu).
  3. As the cursor touches Favorites, they will pop up in a menu
  4. Swoop the cursor into that list of favorites and RIGHT-click anywhere inside the list of favorites; a menu will pop up. Near the bottom is an option to Sort by Name.

Sorting Favorites on Newer Computers
(Windows ME, 2000, Win XP and IE Version 6+)

On newer computers the Favorites are sorted right in the browser window. See Figure 6, below.


Figure 6: Sorting Favorites on Newer Versions of Windows and IE

  1. Open the browser. At the top of the browser window there is a list of menu items:
    File       Edit       View       Favorites       Tools       Help
  2. Click on the Favorites menu to display the list of Favorites (item 1, above)
  3. RIGHT-click anywhere in the list of Favorites
  4. Select Sort by Name from the popup menu - near the bottom of the list of options (item 2, above)


1994 - 2010 Paula Edmiston

http://theflyingcat.com/handouts/msiebm.html
Last Edited: 01 Dec 05