# Making web pages available offline (IE)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 23, 2011, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764 "2011-08-23T11:56:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2011, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764/1 "2011-08-23T11:56:33Z")
A few years ago (not sure which version of explorer) when adding a page to your Favorites you were able click a box to make it available offline. IIRC, you could even click a second box to make links on that page available.
Wanting to do that again I did a search and apparently you can accomplish the former by doing a File/Save and you can’t do the latter.
1. Why would they discontinue that feature??
2. Is there actually a way to do what I want to do other than File/Save???
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764/2 "2011-08-23T16:30:31Z")
As web pages have gotten fancier, the reliability of saving them offline has declined. And when saving fails on many sites, the tendency of the non-techinical user is to blame the browser’s “save offline” feature, not the web sites’ non-offlineable design.
At some point marketing decides that a feature which fails often is worse than no feature at all.
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### Author:  [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2011, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764/3 "2011-08-24T10:43:14Z")
Makes sense.
Assuming that File/Save As is the only way to accomplish half of what I want to do… which type of file should I choose?
Web Page Complete
Web Archive, Single File
Web Page, HTML only
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2011, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764/4 "2011-08-24T23:54:27Z")
The first two choices are higher fidelity; they’ll include graphics & such. But they may also include “smarts” which wil fail when offline & your page will look or act weird. Of these two, best to use [Web archive, single file] versus [Web Page, Complete].
The last choice, [web page, HTML only], will include the least baggage but look the worst.
Overall you’ll find that different sites will have different results. I suggest you try the [web archive, single file] first and if that particular site or page has problems offline, switch to using the [web page html only] for that particular site and accept the crappy look.
Unfortunately, this will be a matter of some trial and error. Game sites are all but hopeless. Catalog pages from e-commerce sites vary but most are OK-ish. Pages from sites such as this SDMB save offline just fine.
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### Author:  [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2011, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-web-pages-available-offline-ie/593764/5 "2011-08-25T11:16:17Z")
Thanks much!! My interest is mainly informational sites that I have saved to refer to while travelling (civil war battlefields mainly).
On a somewhat related issue… any experience with Google Earth while offline?? It seems that it caches areas of the country down to a certain level. I wonder if there is a way to manage that.