How to remove text from form autocomplete box in Firefox or Internet Explorer

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Technology by engtech on November 16th, 2006

A friend was commenting that I was going around leaving comments on blogs with http://engtech.wordpress as the URL.

Oops, I mistyped something in the form auto-complete box and now it is the first thing that comes up when I’m entering a URL.

Read more for information on how to fix this common problem.

This is easy to fix. Press “Up” or “Down” so that the entry you want to remove is selected / highlighted.

Press “Delete” and the incorrect entry will be removed.

Not so hard!

(In case you were wondering, the form I was trying this on is Kineda’s blogebrity widget. Yes, it’s link bait but it’s bright and shiny and it calls me a B-Lister so I can’t resist.)

14 Responses to 'How to remove text from form autocomplete box in Firefox or Internet Explorer'

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Lloyd Budd said, on November 16th, 2006 at

Thank you — how often is that an inside joke ;-)

I would like my browser to have a little X on the right to delete an entry, so I don’t have to get my fingers all twisted ;-)
Chris said, on November 16th, 2006 at

This doesnt seem to work for me in Flock… and it should, its really no different than firefox.

Any suggestions?
engtech said, on November 16th, 2006 at

@chris: try single-clicking in the form box… does that bring up the list of results?
bjhess said, on November 16th, 2006 at

Now if I could figure out how to delete typos in the IE address bar autocomplete. :)
engtech said, on November 16th, 2006 at

@bjhess: IE address bar is a pain, as you have to edit the registry on your computer:
http://www.tweakxp.com/article37093.aspx
Chris said, on November 16th, 2006 at

It does… single-clicking brings up the list, but clicking delete only closes it.

Guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and clean out Private Data including saved form information.
bjhess said, on November 16th, 2006 at

@engtech: Do you know if IE 7 provides different functionality in the address bar?
engtech said, on November 16th, 2006 at

@chris: once you have the list up, can you use Up/Down to move through it and select different items?

@bjhess: I couldn’t tell you. I’ve been avoiding IE7 like the plague because it usually takes MS two service packs to get the thing functional.
Chris said, on November 16th, 2006 at

I can move up and down between them, but when I hit delete it just closed the drop-down.

Ended up having to go into my saved passwords list and manually delete them, which was alright since I had a ton in there I didnt use anymore for other sites too, so it all worked out.
engtech said, on November 17th, 2006 at

@chris: glad to know you got it fixed. Sorry I couldn’t have been of more help.
James said, on November 17th, 2006 at

This doesn’t work for me in firefox. Maybe it’s because there’s a password tied to the entry…
engtech said, on November 17th, 2006 at

Yeah, if it’s a password box then you have to use the password manager instead of the autocomplete.
Amniarix said, on January 22nd, 2007 at

> This doesn’t work for me in firefox.
For Firefox press Shift+Del (not backspace) to remove an individual autocomplete entry.
astroman said, on March 18th, 2007 at

On the Mac, if shift-delete doesn’t work, try option-shift-delete. It worked for me!

It worked even in forms on a web page. Just highlight the offending example (e.g., the one where you inadvertently typed too quickly and your password appeared)–and press option-shift-delete.

Voila! No more eyes-only, top secret passwords show up!