Optimize PC|Windows Computer Tips and Resources

Internet Explorer is the most popular web browser on the planet, at least based on the number of sheer users. While there are many flavors of Internet Explorer out and about today still, upgrades from IE5 and IE6 to Internet Explorer 7 are the norm - so we’re going to show you how to clean IE 7’s browsing history, temporary files and cookies. Likely when Internet Explorer 8 makes its way around, we’ll probably add a tutorial for that as well, should the cleaning process be significantly different.

In any case, let’s get started.

There are actually a couple of ways to clean IE7’s browsing history and temporary files, so we’ll share the one-click (well, almost) way to clean Internet Explorer 7, and then we’ll show you the longer version that will also allow you to see your temporary internet files, set the size of your cache and change the days that IE7 stores your web browsing history.

How to remove IE7 temporary files and histories

Step 1: From Internet Explorer’s main menu, choose “Tools” and then click on “Delete Browsing History”:

Step 2: When the new window pops up, you have several choices in front of you:

• Temporary Internet Files
• Cookies
• History
• Form Data
• Passwords

You can either pick and choose which part of your browsing history you want to remove, or you can use the “Delete All” button that is displayed at the bottom of the window:

Now, if you use Internet Explorer to save usernames and passwords for website logins, you should avoid using the “Delete All” option as these stored passwords will be removed. That’s a headache you just do not want. However, for a secure way to store your passwords, we recommend that you use RoboForm - it’s secure whereas IE7’s password manager is not.

Step 3:Confirm your intent to delete IE’s temporary files, cookies and histories. When you click on a “Delete” button, you will see a confirmation window like this:

Step 4: Once the confirmation window pops up, click “Yes”. If you chose the “Delete All” option, you’re all set, otherwise - you’ll have to click on the “Close” button.

IE7 Browser History Settings, View Temporary Internet Files, Set Cache Size

Step 1: From Internet Explorer’s main menu, choose “Tools” and then click on “Options”:

Step 2: Be sure that you are viewing the “General” tab, then under “Browsing History”, choose “Settings”:

Step 3: Once the “Temporary Internet Files and History Settings” window pops up, you will see several different options, but we’ll only focus on three: “Disk Space to Use” and “View Files” button (under the “Temporary Internet Files” heading) and the “Days to keep pages in history” under the “History” heading:

For the “Disk Space to use” option, it is recommended that you keep this around 80Mb. I do not personally use Internet Explorer, and I upgraded it just to write this tutorial and my cache was 2Gb! If your cache, or disk space allocation is too high, it can bog down your browser and can slow down your web browsing speeds. This is more of an IE optimization tip… but it’s relevant, and we’re here anyway.

If you’re curious as to what types of files are being stored from your previous web browsing sessions, you can click on the “View Files” button to see all of a lot of images, cookies, and so forth that are being stored in your Temporary Internet Files folder.

For the “Days to keep pages in history” option under the “History” heading - you can set this to whatever you like. Basically, it’ll cache the pages that you have visited for easy reference later and may also speed up your time in accessing these saved pages. The default is 20 days, but again, you can choose whatever you like.

Step 4: Once you’re done setting your cache size (disk space allocation for temp internet files), viewing your temporary internet files and setting the days you want to keep web pages - click “OK” - you’re all done.

We hope that this tutorial has helped some of you out to clean your browsing history and remove unwanted cookies and temporary internet files from your Internet Explorer 7 web browser.

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