How to Clear Location or Netsite Field



	Clear Location or Netsite Field

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How to clear the "Location" or "Netsite" pulldown menu on Windows

You can go to a specific web page in Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator by typing its location (its Universal Resource Locator, or "URL") into the "Location" or "Netsite" field at the top of the window. On Windows systems, the most recent locations you entered this way will then be remembered so you can later click on the arrow at the right end of the field and select them from a list. You may occasionally want to clear out this list; here's how to do it.

(Note that this list that appears in the "Location" or "Netsite" field only shows locations you've typed in; it is different from the browser's "global history" list, which keeps track of all of the web pages you've visited.)

Method for...
Netscape 4.06 or above | Netscape 4.x on Win95/98/NT | Netscape 2, 3 on Win95/NT4 | Netscape 2, 3 on WinNT3.51 | Netscape on Win3.x

For Netscape Communicator/Navigator 4.06 or above:
Open Preferences from the Edit in menu bar. Select Navigator from the left tree, on the right, you will see the Location Bar History, click the "Clear Location Bar" button. Done.

For Netscape Communicator 4.x or Navigator 4.x on Windows 95/98/NT:
Make sure that you quit from Navigator or Communicator before you make any of the changes below. You should not have Netscape running while you edit any files in the Netscape directory.

The information in the Location pulldown menu is stored in a file named "prefs.js" on your computer. This file should be in a subdirectory under the directory where Netscape Communicator is installed on your computer; for example, it might be located at "C:\Program Files\Netscape\Users\yourname\prefs.js".

Find this file on your hard disk, and use (plain) text editor to open it (not double click on it). You'll see several lines in that file which look something like this:

     user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_1", "http://help.netscape.com/");
     user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_2", "http://altavista.digital.com/");
     user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_3", "http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/");
     user_pref("browser.url_history.URL_4", "http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html");

These lines (only the ones which say "browser.url_history" in them) define what shows up in the Location pulldown menu. Delete all of these lines (but not any other lines in the file), then save your changes and start Communicator. The Location menu should now be empty.

For Netscape Navigator 2.x and 3.x on Windows 95/NT 4.0:
Make sure that you quit from Navigator before you make any of the changes below.

This involves editing the Windows Registry, which can potentially harm your system if you edit or delete the wrong entries. Make sure you have current backups of your system before you try this.

Select Run from the Start menu, and enter "regedit.exe" (on Windows 95) or "regedt32.exe" (on Windows NT 4.0), then press Return. When the registry editor appears, go down through this hierarchy:

          HKEY_CURRENT_USER 
               Software 
                    Netscape 
                         Navigator 
                              URL History

Clear each entry listed under "URL History" by double-clicking in the Name column of a line, deleting whatever appears in the Value data field of the dialog box, and clicking "OK". Repeat for each line. When you're done, quit from the registry editor and start your Netscape software again.

For Netscape Navigator 2.x and 3.x on Windows NT 3.51:
Make sure that you quit from Navigator before you make any of the changes below.

This involves editing the Windows Registry, which can potentially harm your system if you edit or delete the wrong entries. Make sure you have current backups of your system before you try this.

Select Run from the File menu in Program Manager, enter "regedt32.exe", and press Return. When the registry editor appears, go down through this hierarchy:

          HKEY_CURRENT_USER 
               Software 
                    Netscape 
                         Navigator 
                              URL History

Clear each entry listed under "URL History" by double-clicking on a line, deleting whatever appears in the String field of the dialog box, and clicking "OK". Repeat for each line. When you're done, quit from the registry editor and start your Netscape software again.

For Netscape Navigator or Communicator on Windows 3.1 or 3.11:
Make sure that you quit from Navigator or Communicator before you make any of the changes below.

Use the Windows "Notepad" utility program to open the "NETSCAPE.INI" file, which is probably either in your "C:\WINDOWS" directory or in the directory where you installed the Netscape software. In this file you will find a section titled "[URL History]", followed by lines which begin with "URL_1=", "URL_2=", and so forth. Delete all of the text after the equals sign for each one of these lines, then save the file and start Netscape Navigator again.

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This page was last modified on 14 April, 2005.

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