How to Organize Your Favorites (MSIE)

We’re frequently surprised at the way many of our clients use their computers.

Many of you appear to like using the Favorites sidebar—the strip that runs down the left-hand side of the screen, blocking as much as 25 to 33% of the screen. As we’re always looking for ways to maximize the available screen real estate, we’ve never liked these sidebars (others include History, and Search; we prefer the Google toolbar).

Evidently, many of you feel differently about this.

Our clients usually seem surprised when we show them they can be organized into hierarchal folders, for example, Computers> Repair> NextTech Magazine, or Sports> Baseball> New York Yankees.

These folders allow intuitive grouping of similarly themed bookmarks and prevents that endlessly scrolling feeling you get when you’re, well, endlessly scrolling, looking for that one bookmark.

  • To create these folders, on the menu go to Favorites>Add to Favorites
  • Click on the “Create In >>” button
  • Click the “New Folder” button
  • Name your new folder
  • Repeat as much as you want

You can create a folder within another folder (establishing your hierarchy) by selecting the top-level folder of your choice (for example, “Sports”), clicking the “New Folder” button, then naming that second-tier folder (for example, “Baseball”).

When you want to bookmark a site into one of these folders, select Favorites>Add to Favorites, then click the folder in which you’d like to save the bookmark. Click “OK” and you’re done.

It’s that simple.

Right-clicking on the Favorites menu and selecting “Sort by Name” makes even endlessly scrolling at least a bit easier when all your Favorites are available alphabetically. You may also delete a bookmark by right-clicking on it and selecting “Delete”.

Sorting Favorites already bookmarked but unorganized is a bit trickier using Internet Explorer’s “Organize Folders” applet—you can only move one bookmark at a time; we much prefer using Windows Explorer—you can drag and drop huge groups of bookmarks into the appropriate folders, but that is a topic, perhaps, for another time.

Let’s be clear: there is no right or wrong way to surf the Web. If you’re comfortable using those sidebars (we still don’t get it), then use ‘em to your heart’s content. We offer this advice solely as a way to make your digital life a bit easier, not to mention more organized.

Updated: November 18, 2005