Tip: To clean up a single bad “remembered” form data in Internet Explorer

Thanks to Ryan Walters, wherever you are for this!

I love the Internet Explorer feature to remember entries in form data. Well, at least I love it again, thanks to this tip. For some time I hated it every time I hit certain websites. Why? Because one time I mistyped an entry.

Usually this happens because my right hand hitting the enter key too soon. So instead of an entry of, say 9 characters, it has only the first 7. So from now on every time I hit that web page, when I start typing, the two remembered entries now appear, one good and one bad. And to make it worse, the incorrect one appears at the top of the list. And it of course will happen to the login name to a website you regularly use but wisely don’t use the auto logon feature to.

Yes, I could use the supported feature in the Tools–>Internet Options to clear out all of the saved data. This is in the Content tab of the properties dialog, at the AutoComplete Settings button, where you can also control different types of things that it will remember. But I don’t want to wipe out everything, just that one entry.

Yes, ultimately these things are stored in the Windows registry and I could manually track down the bad entry and delete it there. And before you start, yes I could also use a differnet browser, but that would be trading problems instead of solving them. All of which is way to much work to bother. Especially now that I stumbled upon this tip.

Here is what to do. When you get to a web form that has a bad remembered entry, start entering data in the field so that the list appears. Place you mouse over the bad entry, but do not click. Reach over and hit the delete key. Who would have thought it could be so simple. If only the developer that added this feature had thought to make it a right click option, then we would have known it was there!