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Can't remove an old site from inline autocomplete

  • 7 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by AliceWyman

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At least one old address still shows in inline autocomplete, despite deleting all bookmarks, history, etc. tickboxes for "Everything" dates. It doesn't show in the dropdown addresses either. I would still like to use autocomplete from history and bookmarks from now on, I'd just like to "flush" all old addresses. I've disabled all addons. I do still find the address in some of the support files, i.e., cache.js, cookies.sqlite, places.sqlite, sessionstore.js. Are thosefiles not cleaned by deleting bookmarks/history/etc. ? TY

At least one old address still shows in inline autocomplete, despite deleting all bookmarks, history, etc. tickboxes for "Everything" dates. It doesn't show in the dropdown addresses either. I would still like to use autocomplete from history and bookmarks from now on, I'd just like to "flush" all old addresses. I've disabled all addons. I do still find the address in some of the support files, i.e., cache.js, cookies.sqlite, places.sqlite, sessionstore.js. Are thosefiles not cleaned by deleting bookmarks/history/etc. ? TY

All Replies (7)

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See Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox under How do I remove a single website from my history?

  1. At the top of the Firefox window, click the Firefox button, go over to the History menu (For Windows XP: click the History menu) and select Show All History to open the Library window.
  2. Search for the website you want to remove from your history by typing its name in the Search History field in the top-right corner and then pressing Enter.
  3. Then, in the search results, right-click on the site you want to remove, and select Forget About This Site.

Does that help? (If not, you may need to manually delete the places.sqlite file from the Firefox profile folder).

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Use these steps to remove saved (form) data from a drop down list:

  1. Click the (empty) input field on the web page to open the drop down list
  2. Highlight an entry in the drop down list
  3. Press the Delete key (on Mac: Shift+Delete) to remove it.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox Profile Folder and remove all places files.

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Appreciate the response, but 1) It was neither form data nor in the drop-down list, only in the *inline* autocomplete. I'm wondering where it came from after typing only one letter into the address bar and having previously deleted all bookmarks, history, etc. 2) I had already run Places Maintenance (although not with "Expire" or "Vacuum" options, since nowhere does it say what those do....) and the files were okay. 3) My guess is that the places.sqlite doesn't *really* delete places, just "marks them for deletion similar to Thunderbird et al. Might this be correct? TY

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Again, appreciate all replies. But after running the "Clear history" with all options checked, there were no sites visible in history, and no bookmarks; yet the inline autocomplete *still* put up an old site...

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Besides removing your Browsing history (stored in the places.sqlite file) you can also try removing your Form & Search History, stored in the formhistory.sqlite file, if clearing those items from the Clear Recent History "Everything" dates doesn't work. Related KB articles:

If you've tried removing the places.sqlite and formhistory.sqlite files from the Firefox profile folder ( by deleting, moving, or renaming those files with Firefox closed) and the problem remains, you could try the Reset Firefox feature as a last resort.

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OK, tracked it down to the places.sqlite. The file size was about 20mb despite "Clearing" everything beforehand. Curiously, I could see the old site name by hex viewing within the places.sqlite file, although looking at the file with an sqlite viewer didn't show it. It's like the file had old data past some end field. I saw the same thing (text findable within the file but not in an sqlite viewer) in cookies.sqlite. Question: is this a bug in the sqlite management by Firefox, did the developers decide not to flush old sqlite data past the current data, or just corruption in my sqlite files? Thanks.

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You asked, Question: is this a bug in the sqlite management by Firefox, did the developers decide not to flush old sqlite data past the current data, or just corruption in my sqlite files?

I can't answer that but you can check the External links section of the Mozillazine article linked by cor-el for more information:

Here is a list of currently open Places bugs, if you're interested.

Modified by AliceWyman