Managing the History File

[Kob]

Hi guys,

Is there a way to manage the history file that is shown in the URL drop-down listbox?
I have there all kinds of stale/erroneous URLs that I entered in the past, and I want to delete those (possibly with a text editor).
Thanks.

[nicubunu]

Ctrl+H to bring the History window and then search and delete.

[Kob]

Thanks - I did not realize that ctrl+H open such possibilities.
However, if I enter erroneous URL (e.g. www.nytimes.c ), that URL will appear in the drop-down loaction bar but not in the history file opened by ctrl+H (since there is no site by that name). How do I delete that erroneous URL from the history list in the location bar?

[durbacher]

Edit - Preferences - Navigator - History - "Clear Location Bar"

[Kob]

You are all kind enough to respond, but please read the posting: I do not want to read all the history shown in the location bar - just the erroneous ones.

[nicubunu]

You can try to edit the history.dat file (from the profile directory) and share the results with us, it appears to be text but is very large.

[Kob]

I did try to edit history.dat, but I haven't found out yet what the appropriate format of the entries is. One wrong line deletion, and nothing is shown in the location bar history. I will keep trying, and if successful I will post the results. If anyone can shed a light on this, I will be thankful.

[durbacher]

If you want to delete only single lines, you have to edit the file localstore.rdf.
The entries are below " <RDF:Seq about="nc:urlbar-history"> "
Don't know if you can simply delete lines there, but I'd suppose you simply try...

[Kob]

I am about to give up. In localstore.rdf there are *most* of the URLs that appear in the drop-down location bar, but not all. Also, If I delete a URL line from that file, save it and fire Mozilla up, the location bar still shows the deleted URL and updates the localstore.rdf with that entry.

[durbacher]

Too bad...
Are you *sure* Mozilla wasn't running while you deleted that line?
Check the running processes!
Also make sure that there are not several places in that file where the URLs are stored.


Maybe you should do a search for file *content*.
Search - only in you mozilla profile directory of course, or one or two levels above, depending on your OS version - for an unique part of your location bar history.
I could only find it in my localstore.rdf. Maybe in the Mozilla app directory?? But that would be for every profile and I don't think profiles share their history...