I have a lot of IE shortcuts.
Is it safe to delete them and if so how do I do it?
They look like this:
e Microsoft Office Online: Help and How-to: Add t… office.microsoft (office.microsoft.com)
e Excel Message Board::View topic – How to f… excel(www.excel.com)
These are preceded by the IE Icon

Hi chequer,

Where are these shortcuts? On your Desktop? In your IE Favourites?

The short answer is that you can safely delete them - they are just a quick way of opening IE at a specified web page. Right click an icon, select 'Delete' from the menu that appears and click Yes to confirm deletion.

If there are many shortcuts to delete, hold the Ctrl key down and left click (once) on each shortcut you want to delete. Let go the Ctrl key, right click on one of the icons you highlighted and select 'Delete'. Click Yes to confirm.

If you are using Windows Search then the file location should be shown in the right of the search results window. I would guess that you will see something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

as the location. If so then these are just references to sites you have visited.

Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools, Internet Options. Click the 'Clear History' button. Then click the 'Delete Files' button, check the box next to 'Delete all offline content' and click OK. Close Internet Explorer and repeat your search (or search for 'All files and folders' using the search term excel).

My bet is that these shortcuts will no longer show up in the search results.

Let me know how it goes.

Sorry for the delay in replying - I had my internet connection cut off for a while.

Have you ever visited the Excel site (which, by the way, is a genuine site)?

Did you clear your browsing history and temp files? Cookies would not appear in the manner you described.

What is the location of the files as shown in the Search window?

Oh, and I'm not Paul, just one of his many helpers.