There are good reasons why you may want to delete the browsing history or other browsing data, stored by the Internet Explorer app. For example, when you type something in the address bar, some of the suggestions you get are based on your search history and you may not want others to see what you have visited in the past. Also, deleting saved cookies may change your experience with some websites, as they only show you information based on the cookies that you have stored in your browser. In this article we will share which browsing data can be deleted from the Internet Explorer 11 app and how to delete it.
How To Access Your Browsing History Data In The Internet Explorer App
To get to the browsing data saved by the Internet Explorer app, you must get to the History section of your browser.
To do this, you must first open the browser. If you don't know how to do this, please check the "How to Start Both Versions of Internet Explorer in Windows 8.1" section from this article.
Click or tap the Page tools (little wrench icon) button found on the right side of the address bar.
Now choose Options in the menu that is shown.
Now the Internet Explorer Options tab is opened. Scroll down to the History section and click or tap the Select button.
Now you get to choose what browsing data you want to delete. Click Delete once you've checked all the data types that you want to remove.
Which Browsing Data Can Be Deleted?
Your stored browsing data is split into the following categories:
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Cached images - your browser saves images and other media content from the websites that you are visiting so that they load faster the next time you visit them. Check this box to delete this type of content.
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Cookies - if you wan to learn more about cookies and their role in browsing the web, read this guide: What are Cookies & What Do They Do?. If you want to delete them, check this box.
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Browsing history - your browsing history is a list with all the websites that you have visited. Check this box to delete it.
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Download history - your browser keeps a list of all the files that you have downloaded from the Internet. Check this box to delete this list. Keep in mind that only the list is deleted, the files still remain in your device.
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Saved form data - Internet Explorer stores the data that was used to fill forms on different websites, if you allowed it to store it. Check this box to delete your stored form data.
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Saved passwords - check this to delete the passwords that are saved for the websites that you have visited.
For more information about saving and managing passwords, read this guide: How To Manage The Passwords Saved By The Internet Explorer App.
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Tracking Protection, ActiveX Filtering, and Do Not Track data - check this box to delete websites you've excluded from ActiveX Filtering, and data that the browser uses to detect tracking activity.
How To Delete Your Browsing Data From The Internet Explorer App
To delete your browsing data, check the types of data that you want to delete. Then, choose if you want to enable or disable the "Keep data from favorites when deleting history" switch. Enabling this will delete all your browsing data while disabling it will still keep historical data for the websites that are in your list of favorites.
Click or tap the Delete button.
A confirmation message is shown, informing you that your browsing history was deleted.
Conclusion
Deleting your browsing data can be useful in all kinds of scenarios, but especially when you want to give your computer or device to another person and you don't want him or her to easily access the websites that you have visited, log in with your stored passwords and so on.
We hope that you have found this guide useful. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask using the form below.