I made a mess with Internet Explorer (plz Help!)

Hello everyone, I eagerly want to know if there's a way to solve the following problem...
I was watching my Bookmark links on Internet Explorer, at their little list there, you know? Then I right-clicked on one of the bookmark links, and there was this "Classify By Name" option...So I got curious and clicked it....And for my desperation, it re-listed my ENTIRE bookmark list alphabetically! It messed up 5 years of building up links! It's a whole mess.

What I need to know is if there's a way to fix that, to re-list all the bookmark links by their respective Date. I don't care if its with some external program, holy water or whatever, I really need to refix it!

Thank you for your time,
Rafael, the desperate guy.

Switch to Mozilla Firefox and start over is my suggestion.

I'd restore from backup.

jhans0n, what you mean "from backup"?

Firefox.

I am guessing he means your bookmark backup file.

I haven't used IE for years, but other browsers automatically make a backup file of the bookmarks. You might want to check if IE does this and if so where it hides the file.

It doesn't -- IE doesn't store your bookmarks in a file, they are all individual shortcut files to website addresses that sit in a 'favorites' folder under your personal profile.

that said: I'm not sure that there is a way to un-sort them once you hit that option...

Is there a registry flag you could toggle to resort the list?

Only n00bs use IE, switch to Firefox.

I use IE on windows and I'm not a n00b.


As far as I know there isn't a flag but there is a key called MenuOrder
(HKEY_CURRENT_USER->Software->Microsoft->Windows->Currentversion->Explorer->MenuOrder->Favorites). The problem there is that it's a in a binarry format.

The codeproject link is worth a look first.

One solution is to back-up the registry and try and delete all the keys in the Favorates key.

Here's something about it http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsxp.customize&tid=e87d8315-3f37-407d-b90f-a43cd6844657&cat=en_US_20a99704-5b96-4498-b9d1-a6aed1faa89a&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1

And one or two other places of interest
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/thread-3465651.php
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/shell/iefavdecon.aspx

For all the people mentioning firefox, yeah it is alot safer and sticks to the standards, BUT, IT DOESN'T SOLVE HIS PROBLEM!

"Yeah, i'm having a problem with my code in blitz3d"

"Hmmm, i think the best way to go is install Dark Basic Pro."

Mmm, he has done a 'sort by name'.

IE won't do this by default so, a way out could be to create a new favourites folder and move everthing into it, then move it back out again into the default mode.

On the other hand - FireFox IS the answer. You can import your bookmarks. With FF, you can then 'Organise' them EXACTLY back how they were. You may have to do this one-at-a-time though. It's just a case then of re-importing them back into IE.

What else did you think "classify by name" was going to do?

I don't see what the problem is. Surely everything is easier to find when they're listed alphabetically?

When I said "restore from backup" I meant that surely in 5 years, if these bookmarks are so important that even having them in the wrong order would mess you up, and you're here so you're obviously a programmer and have irreplaceable source code lying around, you've backed up your registry, app settings, and files at some point, or at the very least set a restore point in XP. So now it's time to use that backup or restore point.

I don't think theres anything you can do. By default IE lists your bookmarks in the order you create them with your latest at the bottom. My guess there's no turning back now :(.

I still prefer IE to firefox and actually like the yellow warning bars at the top of the screen. If I get warnings I usualy don't use the website, unless I know what it is thats being run. I have firefox as a backup browser and seldom use it, I just like IE better.

Use firefox.


Favorites Links are only a load of files, why not just import them into FF and sort them by whatever you need to sort by ??.

i used to have a bigpageolinks.htm file what i want where i want it and in one file not the gazzillion that get made by ie (wasting hard drive clusters and taking just as long as a huge file to move when defragging as were cookies and all the junk in temp internet folders)

now i just use ie's method and have folders for things and tidy it up now and then ... eg delete older pages from webcomics keeping only the main site and current page copy any 'interesting' pictures to a htm file so i can see what they link to instead of just the url

That's why you delete the temp files before doing something like this. You can also disable or limit the amount of space that can be used by these files. But websites will load slower without them, as all their media must be redownloaded each time you view the page.

aye i know that
but when you are on 56k dial up (whcih i was at the time old w98 box) the last thing you want is to reload EVERYTHING all over again ;)

which is kinda why i get iffy bout games that have individual images (or 4 frames max) and not image maps when alls said and done in most cases it would fit onto a single 1024*768 file

What if you did a system restore to roll back to a day or two ago before you sorted your bookmarks? That always seems to come in handy when all hope seems lost and something is screwed up beyond repair.

In windows XP, Start > All programs > Accessories > System tools > System Restore

Since it does appear to store the order in a binary registry key, most likely the system restore would indeed take care of it...

and roll back any changes you may NOT want changed ;)

I believe I said to start over also. Five years of bookmarks can't be good for storage space.

That i agree with actually. My favourites list reads like a history more than anything. I don't think i visit sites on my favourites list too often, as it's too dam big...

[Problem Solved]


MAY THE HEAVENS BLESS YOU!! I did that, found a nice Restoration Point just a couple of days ago, Windows restored it, and VOILÀ! there it was, my date-of-creation-based Bookmark Listing! Thanks Trb!

I would also like to deeply thank everyone else that sought the answer to this issue, you really kept my hope up!

Thanks all!

Cya,
Rafael. Not so desperate anymore.

Oh, right, like someone would ever say that :P

Well, someone might just say that, someday. But if the person accepts it and go to the 'cough' Dark side of the force 'cough', they'd be just plain dumb :D