How do I … remove addresses in a browser bar?

Q: Is there a way to get rid of Web addresses in my Internet Explorer address bar?

I have a lot of sites I would never need and would like to clean them out. Individually, if possible. — Nels Nelson, Liberty Lake

A: If one periodically clears out a browser’s history, you wipe out the whole list of URLs that show up in the pull-down list inside the browser address bar.

The not-so-elegant solution offered here applies only to Internet Explorer; we won’t vouch that it works for other browsers.

And it takes several steps, including diving into the Windows Registry (take a hike, Mac users). Of course, back up the registry first before proceeding. And close your browser first.

Then launch registry editor by going through Start and Run, then typing REGEDIT in the run command and hitting enter.

Then when the Regedit editor opens, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Internet Explorer\Typed URLS and you’ll find a right-side pane showing all the URLs in the browser address list.

If the editor window is maximized, it’s easy to see which ones are which. The easy step is to highlight each URL you don’t want, right-click and delete.

Here’s the tricky part. Say you have six URLs and they’re listed as URL1, URL2 and so on. If you delete URLS 3 and 5 and close the editor, you’ll end up losing all six.

After deleting any of the URLs, you must rename the remainder in correct numerical sequence. So in the example above, after deleting URLs 3 and 5, you’d right-click on URL4 and rename it URL3. Then you’d do the same with URL6, renaming it URL5. When all are re-sequenced, close the editor. Then reload IE.

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