My IE Favorites are a total chaotic mess but the interface for organizing them is so annoying that I never get around to it. I mean I’d be happy if I could just alphabetize them (or at the very least the folders!)…
Is there some utility out there that lets you do this in an easier environment? I don’t want to run a separate program to actually access my Favorites and so on, I still want to be able to use them from the IE menu… but I just gotta get the thing organized!
In IE 5.5 and upwards I know you that you just have to right-click anywhere on the list of bookmarks and choose ‘Sort by name’ and Voilà, you have an alphabetized list !
You can try programs such as Advanced Link Catalog (shareware) if you need more powerful options.
IE shortcuts are stored on the filesystem as files and folders, so they can be organised, copied, deleted and moved using the Windows Explorer just like any other set of files.
The trick is knowing where to look for the favourites folder since this depends on your operating system.
If you’re using Windows 2000, XP or 2003 then it’ll be somewhere like c:\Documents and Settings<your username>\Favourites.
On Windows NT4 it’ll be c:\winnt\profiles<your username>\Favourites.
On Win 95/98/Me I think it’s just c:\windows\Favourites, but it’s been a while since I used them so I may have that wrong.
As Ponster said, if you right-click and select “Sort by Name” IE will organize them alphabetically. Also, if you hold down the SHIFT key when you click on “Organize Favorites” you can organize your Favorites using the standard Windows Explorer interface - which I find to be a sight better than the built-in organizing interface.
If you can find a copy of favorg (freeware originally in PC magazine Nov 7, 2000), you may find it useful. It’s main purpose is to go rebuild your favicon library, which is cute. But it’s more valuable purpose is to scan all of your links, and tell you which ones are still valid. It can then delete the ones that aren’t active anymore.
Cool! You know, I’d tried looking for a “sort by” right click menu option… but only in the “Organize Favorites” window… durrrr! Anyway alphabetizing will at least keep me from tearing my hair out until I can get the whole mess organized into something meaningful. I’ll check out that shareware program–thanks!
I’ve sorted the folder a thousand times in Windows Explorer–it doesn’t change the order it is displayed when I use the Favorites menu in IE though. That was the first thing I tried.
Unfortunately the order that it displays in Windows Explorer isn’t translated across into the Favorites menu in IE. I mean it works for dragging links from folder to folder and all, but I do that via Windows Explorer anyway. I want a way to drag the folders themselves up and down the list so that they are in the order I want them in. Worst case scenario I could just figure out my order of preference and then do something lame like prefix all the folder names with numbers… ugh… I have over 100 folders.
OpalCat, you didn’t say which version of Windows you are using, so this advice might not help much. For Windows 9x the free utility menusnap works well to alphabetize favorites and the start menu. Modern versions of Windows are unsupported, though.
Here’s a useful trick from the annoyances.org webmaster that explains what exactly the menusnap program might be doing behind the scenes.
Well I don’t actually want the list alphabetical. The right click trick got it alphabetical for me which is how I have it now, which at least means that it doesn’t take me 5 minutes to find something every time I want to go somewhere, but it isn’t the organization that I want. I want to put things in a specific order, based on how often I access things, putting similar things near each other in a logical order, etc. I want to have total control over the placement. I only said that I wanted to know how to make it alphabetical because it seemed that there must be a way and at least then it wouldn’t be totally random.
FWIW, Control-B while you’re in MSIE brings up a little dialogue box for managing favorites.
It occurs to me, Opal, that what might be useful for you is to have a hierarchy of folders, where opening one folder might lead, not to individual favorites links, but to subfolders under it. For example, with my interest in religion, I might have a “Religious Links” folder, with subfolders of “Bible Texts,” “Episcopal Websites,” “Theology Websites,” and “Misc.”
Hi, Dominic! (Sorry – I had two points and was specifically addressing Opal in one, so it had to be done!)
I’ve been hoping to avoid going another layer deep in folders… several of my folders already have subfolders… but you are right, it may be inevitable. 